It started in the evening on September 18, two years ago. The winds picked up; waves began crashing ashore with intensity; the skies darkened.

Unbeknownst to the people of Dominica, Hurricane Maria was slowly gathering the strength it needed to destroy over 90 percent of the island’s structures, cripple its economy, and force a small country that did little to cause climate change to reckon with its consequences.

Yet despite the ominous signs befalling Dominica, many residents say they were no more worried than usual. The tiny Caribbean island, after all, is no stranger to hurricanes. Situated in the eastern Caribbean, Dominica sits just over 500 miles northeast of Caracas, Venezuela and among a string of islands that stich the Caribbean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. And though the soon-to-end 2019 hurricane season spared the nation, it may not be so lucky next year, or the year after.

In the span of a single night, Dominica was torn apart. But from the devastation, the tiny country forged a new goal: to become the world’s first climate-resilient nation, capable of prospering despite a new era of storms made worse by climate change.

The storm approaches

As Maria approached land, the island’s residents quickly realised the storm would be much worse than they had anticipated.

“We kept listening to the radio to figure out what was going on,” says Ann Aeevieal, a local cook at the Tamarind Tree Hotel. “They said it was a Category 2, and then a Category 3.”

As we continue pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warming the planet, hurricanes like Maria are expected to grow in number and intensity. Studies have shown that the Atlantic Ocean is heating up, causing storms to become more common, intense, and long-lasting.

Warm ocean water is fuel to a hurricane, powering it like an engine. The warmer the water, the more the engine revs, growing faster, larger, and capable of dumping more water. As Maria neared the Caribbean Sea, it burst to life, a process meteorologists describe as “rapid intensification.”

Stephanie Astaphan, an employee at the island’s Secret Bay hotel, says, “When you’re living in the hurricane belt, you get desensitised. And then Anderson Cooper said, ‘The island of Dominica is about to get a Category 5’ and I had this out-of-body experience.”

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