JANY 2025 - NCPR - News Series - The North Country adapting to climate change

Lowville Academy flooded both inside and outside the school for the second time this summer. Photo provided by Shannon Mcdonald Williams

Aug 15, 2025 —

NCPR has reported on climate change for more than two decades, as the narrative has shifted from the basic science and whether it is “real” to documenting changes in real-time and how they’re affecting people and the environment in northern New York State.

In 2024, the NCPR news team embarked on a mission to take the next step, reporting on how people, places, and institutions are already adapting to the “new normal”. The North Country region is heavily rural and outdoors-focused, so we built the coverage around each season. We started on March 19th, the beginning of spring.

As we expect now, thanks to climate change research, floods, heat waves, milder winters, and weather emergencies often drove our reporting. But we felt it was crucial to couple our reporting with how our audience is perceiving and adapting to the changing climate.

So from the onset, we listened.

We launched an ambitious community engagement plan, led by our full-time community engagement reporter Amy Feireisel. Through our NCPR Texting Club (which has grown from 180 to more than 600 audience sources in just three years) and a simple Google survey, more than 300 people shared their thoughts and experiences. Those contacts and stories drove the reporting. We found many of the people featured in our stories because they replied to our community engagement work. We reported the survey and texting results back to the audience in special segments as our series evolved. It was a real listener-centered project.

The result is a news series on climate change that centers real people’s voices and concerns, how they’re already changing their habits, and how entire communities are talking about adapting to this new reality. Our news team produced 29 stories and counting, all of which you can see on our series landing page here. The work is still ongoing, as we continue in the winter of 2025. The coverage is so popular, we’re likely to continue into a second year.

STORIES IN ENTRY (you can listen to the first 15 minutes, as required, but I included extra samples to give you a sense of the breadth and depth of the work)

00:00 — 3:00 — (excerpt) — Here’s what you said about spring and climate change in the North Country (5/8/24)

Before we reported, we listened, through our NCPR Texting Club and a simple Google survey. We started reach out to respondents and contacts immediately, but after a month of collection, we reported back to listeners what we heard from them. Here, NCPR community engagement reporter Amy Feiereisel joins co-host Monica Sandrezcki live on our flagship morning news show, Northern Light, to break down what people told us about what kinds of climactic changes they’re seeing in their backyards and neighborhoods.

3:03 — 5:22 — The first bees of spring (3/28/24)

At the onset of the series, we wanted to connect personal, anecdotal observations with real science about climate change. So we started with climate change biologist Curt Stager and one of his annual projects, documenting the date of the emergence of ground bees from the same hillside every year.

5:27 — 8:25 (excerpt) — NY schools have to electrify buses by 2035. Here’s how one district is making the switch (4/2/24)

Our news team is renowned for producing award-winning sound-rich features that combine excellent storytelling, fact-based reporting, and a full range of perspectives and opinions on a given issue. We applied these skills to our climate change series, here bringing depth and context to a statewide debate over a mandate to buy electric school buses.

8:28 — 10:22 (excerpt) — Snowmobiling is big business on the Tug Hill, but shorter seasons are making it trickier (3/4/24)

Another deeply reported feature probing how people in a largely conservative area see climate change as it affects the local economy.

10:25 — 13:48 — Climate diary: Tracking climate change on a Depeyster farm (7/2/24)

Throughout the year, we profiled how individuals are responding to climate change and already adapting to it. Many of these people came to us through our audience engagement Texting Club and survey call-outs.  These “Climate Diairies” aired throughout the year. Here’s one example.

13:50 — 15:14 — How farmers, crops are faring with the erratic spring temperatures (3/25/24)

It was important for us to incorporate climate change into as many aspects of our reporting as possible. In our interviews for all kinds of stories, we asked about climate change. We folded climate into stories about Mohawk ash basket making, how senior citizens are coping with changing weather, and in this story about farmers dealing with the damages caused by a warm spring.

15:14 — 17:10 — This heat wave is the “new normal” amid a changing climate in the Adirondacks (6/18/24)

Of course, the weather made some decisions for us. Amidst an unusually early and prolonged heatwave, we took a big-picture approach to an interview with an expert.

17:14 — 22:07 — As climate change makes the North Country wetter, more archives are plagued by mold (7/15/24)

The feedback from our audience engagement work often took us to unexpected places. We heard from lots of people about mold in their basements or on their windowsills that didn’t used to be there. One museum curator’s text to us about mold problems led to a fascinating story that we learned is a major nationwide issue.

22:09 — 24:20 (contains internal edit for time) — Lowville flooded again. Here’s what we know (and don’t know) (8/20/24)

Flooding from the vestiges of hurricanes pummeled much of the North Country in the summer of 2024. When we reported on the destruction and response, we worked hard to guide officials to frame these incidents in the larger narrative of climate change, while also capturing the local details necessary in any breaking news situation.

24:23 — 26:12 — What the Arctic can teach the North Country about climate change (12/5/24)

Another reach-out through our audience engagement led us to a biologist at St. Lawrence University who studies climate change adaptation among indigenous communities in the Arctic. He wrote a paper about what lessons the North Country can learn from their much more drastic and urgent experiences.

26:15 — 27:42 — Mosquito-borne illnesses are a growing threat in the North Country. Climate change could make it worse (12/2/24)

Again, nature, and climate change itself, dictated some of our decisions. A sharp increase in mosquito-borne illnesses during the summer and fall led us to experts who could explain what’s happening — and not happening — to an unsettled public.

27:45 — 29:58 — How North Country residents said they’re adapting to a changing climate (9/30/24)

In the late summer, we returned to our audience engagement work with our Texting Club, asking this time more directly how people are adapting to the changing climate. After a catchment period, we reported back in the fall. The information and sources we gathered in this second round led to another week-long series in December and continue to generate stories into 2025.