Morton Memorial Library at Pine Hill Announces Drought and Flood: Watershed Moments in the Catskills
The Morton Memorial Library at Pine Hill, located at 22 Elm Street in Pine Hill, NY, announces its second series of talks by acclaimed experts on climate in the northeastern United States. The series will take place on Saturday afternoons in October and November, 2026, at the Library’s landmark building.
Saturday, October 10, 2026, at 3 p.m.
Richard Seager, Palisades Geophysical Institute/Lamont Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University
Nothing permanent except change: a long-term perspective on ongoing climate and environmental change in the Catskills and northeastern United States
The Catskills and northeastern U.S. are a well-forested landscape in a humid continental climate, in contrast to the semi-arid, desert, and Mediterranean climates of the West. Dr. Seager will discuss how oceans, continents, mountains, and winds set up this arid-humid divide, how the East has gotten wetter while the West gets drier, and how the divide is now at its most extreme in the last millennium. The wetting in the East is beyond what we would expect from human-driven climate change. Due to the clearance and fire following European settlement and subsequent fire suppression and reforestation, we now have an unprecedented forest with unprecedented warmth, wetness, and CO2, making it hard to see what the future holds.
Saturday, October 17, 2026, at 3 p.m.
Jennifer Kabat, Author, Nightshining
The Rainmakers Flood: War and Weather Come to Pine Hill
In 1950, the Rainmakers Flood decimated Pine Hill and Margaretville. It was caused by a Cold War weapon created by Bernard Vonnegut, the writer Kurt Vonnegut’s brother, and Vincent Schaefer, a colleague who had never finished high school. Developed in General Electric’s so-called “House of Magic,” the technology, and its story, spiral up through Vietnam, the banning of leaded fuel, Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars project, into geoengineering and the climate crisis today. Jennifer Kabat reads from her book Nightshining on these histories of war and weather and shares the research behind it, from local oral histories with community elders to Defense Department records and news stories.
Saturday, October 24, 2026, at 3 p.m.
Kiyoko Yokota, Ph.D., CLM, Associate Professor of Biology
State University of New York at Oneonta
Clean but Green
Professor Yokota will explain the paradox of oligotrophic cyanobacterial blooms—large outbreaks of blue-green algae that can occur in nutrient-poor waters, even though such blooms are usually associated with nutrient-rich conditions—and how climate change is affecting our lakes. Some cyanobacteria are remarkably well adapted to these conditions, finding ways to obtain scarce nutrients, control their position in the water, and thrive where other organisms cannot.
Saturday, November 7, 2026, at 3 p.m.
Amanda Stevens, Senior Project Manager
New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)
Too Rain or Not Too Rain
As the global climate changes, its impacts are being seen and felt across New York State, including in the Catskills. Amanda Stevens will examine shifting conditions across the state and in our region, including changes in precipitation that contribute to flooding and drought, and how these trends are affecting our communities now and may affect them in the future.
Programs on water, climate, and landscape @theMorton are funded by a generous grant from the Catskill Watershed Corporation.
