California's flooding reveals we're still building cities for the climate of the past

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Heavy storms have flooded roads and intersections across California and forced thousands to evacuate over the last few weeks. Much of the water isn't coming from overflowing rivers. Instead, rainfall is simply overwhelming the infrastructure designed to drain the water and keep people safe from flooding.

To top it off, the storms come on the heels of a severe drought. Reservoirs started out with such low water levels that many are only now approaching average levels—and some are still below average.

The state is increasingly a land of extremes.

New infrastructure must accommodate a "new normal" of intense rainfall and long droughts, which has many rethinking the decades-old data and rules used to build existing infrastructure.

"What we need to do is make sure that we're mainstreaming it into all our infrastructure decisions from here on out," says Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Otherwise we'll be putting good money after bad. We'll have roads and bridges that might get washed out. We might have power infrastructure that's vulnerable."

On today's episode, NPR climate correspondent Lauren Sommer walks us through three innovations that cities around the country are pioneering, in hopes of adapting to shifting and intensifying weather patterns.

Heard of other cool engineering innovations? We'd love to hear about it! Email us at shortwave@npr.org.

This episode was produced by Berly McCoy, edited by Rebecca Ramirez and fact-checked by Anil Oza.