But more and more, parts of California are seeing an increase in such flooding, said Gary Griggs, director of the Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Griggs is among the scientists who sat on a legislative committee to examine how rising sea levels will affect the California economy. He said in the last four years California has shifted from thinking about rising sea levels as a "black box" toward putting money where the science is.
"A number of communities realize they're losing land," he said, adding that in some ways "nuisance" flooding might be to thank for continuing to keep the rising sea levels conversation open.
"Those events are raising the visibility and making it more immediate," he said. "In some ways, it's a good thing."
In just a few decades, most U.S. coastal regions are likely to experience at least 30 days of nuisance flooding every year.
Washington, D.C.; Annapolis, Md.; and Wilmington, N.C., are already in trouble. By 2020, seven more cities, including Baltimore and Atlantic City, N.J., can add themselves to the list. And within the next 35 years, most cities along all coasts will be dealing with routine flooding.
An ominous message from the 'future'
The term "nuisance flooding," which is not as glib as it sounds, basically means municipalities can expect to see more water in the streets and low-lying areas and can expect not only inconvenience but modest damage thanks to rising sea levels spurred by climate change.
This is one message from a study released in December in the journal Earth's Future by two oceanographers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who took tidal data from cities with a continuous 50-year measurement and added local sea-level rise projections to show what the future would look like.
Read more at U.S. Cities Lag Behind Others in the World in Meeting the Challenge of Sea-Level Rise
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