Thread by @nytimes

Chicago is a city built for a different time. The time before climate change. nyti.ms/3xqLJ3Z

The city, erected upon a swamp, is built on a shaky prospect that its Lake Michigan shoreline will remain in essentially the same place it’s been for the past 300 years.

The lake may have other plans. nyti.ms/3xqLJ3Z

Climate change has started pushing Lake Michigan’s water levels toward uncharted territory as patterns of rain, snowfall and evaporation are transformed by the warming world. The lake’s high-water cycles are threatening to get higher; the lows lower. nyti.ms/3xqLJ3Z

In fact, the speed and uncertainty of the changes underscore how Chicago, in some crucial ways, is perhaps more immediately exposed to the dangers of global warming than coastal cities. nyti.ms/3xqLJ3Z

Sometimes the threat of water comes from the sky. Sometimes it comes from the lake. And sometimes it comes from below, when the city’s aged sewer system is overwhelmed, resulting in polluted water spouting onto city streets. nyti.ms/3xqLJ3Z

“The consistent message I hear is that we can expect extremes on both ends,” said one expert.

Read more on how the climate crisis haunts Chicago’s future. nyti.ms/3xqLJ3Z

Correction: Two earlier tweets incorrectly identified the source of the images in these videos. They are from NOAA, TerraMetrics and Landsat/ Copernicus via Google Earth Studio and Google Earth, not Lyndon French. We deleted the incorrect tweets.