Flooding Tells ‘Two Different Stories’ In Michigan Jane Johnston, Circle of Blue – April 27, 2021 Access to ample water supplies could make Michigan a climate refuge. That scenario is attracting considerable attention in the Great Lakes State. But climate change also is disrupting the earth’s meteorological cycles. Which means more fierce Great Lakes region storms and more floods. The consequences are not evenly distributed. Or, in the words of Jeremy Porter, the head of research and development at First Street Foundation, a Brooklyn-based research group, flooding tells “two different stories.” One of them, said Porter, belongs to financially struggling families who are unaware of flood risks. People like Michele Ivey. In September of 2020, Ivey and her siblings, Miki and Bryan, moved out of a two bedroom mobile home in Rochester Hills after the death of their father, and into a home just off of the St. Clair River in East China Township, northwest of Detroit.