Alberto's Fury: A Wake-Up Call for Climate Change

Alberto, the first named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, wreaked havoc in northeastern Mexico, turning into a tropical depression and causing severe flooding. The storm resulted in four deaths, including three children, and exacerbated existing drought conditions, underscoring the impact of climate change.

Alberto, the first named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, has weakened into a tropical depression as it moves inland over northeastern Mexico, bringing more heavy rains and flooding after leaving four dead, including three children.

The governor of Mexico's Nuevo Leon state told local media late Wednesday that at least three people under 18 had died due to the storm. By Thursday morning, civil protection had reported a fourth death due to an electric shock, local media reported. One of the victims was later identified by emergency services as a 15-year-old boy swept away by a current outside Monterrey, Mexico's third-biggest city.

In both Nuevo Leon, where Alberto filled up the Santa Catarina river, causing it to break its banks, and in the coastal Tamaulipas state, local authorities moved people into temporary shelters and paused public activities. The storm, however, brought much-needed rain across swathes of Mexico, where some of its reservoirs had water levels as low as 8% due to an extended drought and summer heat wave.

Nuevo Leon state authorities said they would redirect water from La Boca dam as it neared its maximum capacity of around 40 million cubic meters due to Alberto, after water authorities said a day earlier it was just 35% full. Brett Anderson, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, said on Thursday that due to climate change the types of extreme heat and drought conditions Mexico has experienced will become the new normal, trapping pollutants and drying up the water cycle.

Mexico has since March experienced temperatures 5.2°C (9.4°F) above the historical average and received barely over a third of the normal rainfall for this period, Anderson added. "Climate change is clearly playing a role in enhancing this warming." Climate change is also expected to contribute to more storms over the Atlantic this hurricane season, as warmer ocean waters allow powerful storms to intensify more rapidly.

"The climate crisis is making extreme weather events such as hurricanes and tropical storms more frequent and severe," said Save the Children regional advisor Moa Cortobius. Some 35 million children are living in exposed areas and are at risk this season in the Atlantic, she added. The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Alberto would continue to bring heavy rains and flooding across parts of northeastern Mexico, likely producing "considerable flash and urban flooding" and possibly life-threatening mudslides.

It warned that much of the Texas coastline could continue to see moderate flooding through the morning. The storm made landfall earlier on Thursday near the Mexican city of Tampico and is churning west across the country at 18 miles per hour (30 kph), packing maximum sustained winds of 35 mph (55 kph), the NHC said.

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