David F. Ledford,executive editor

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For those living along Delaware Bay’s exposed coastline, even ordinary storms can do harm.

A no-name rainstorm that blew through the state on Thursday flooded 40 homes behind an 8-foot high seawall at Bayview Beach along the Delaware River south of Wilmington – causing more damage to the little hamlet than did Superstorm Sandy.

“The debris in the field was five to six times worse than Sandy,” Colette Croze said of the logs, grass and trash that washed between homes from the Delaware River and into an open common area.

“Unfortunately, I was here and I watched my house fill with water. I was pretty hysterical. The good news is that I moved my car to high ground; at least I didn’t lose another one.”

On Mother’s Day in 2008, a nor’easter packing high winds shot brine water over Bayview’s seawall and ruined Croze’s Honda Accord parked behind her home, originally built by her grandparents in the mid-1940s and later remodeled and expanded.

Croze has deep roots here, where as a child she played on a wide, sandy beach that’s now open water. While the house has been roughed up over the years, it had never flooded until the storm this week pushed water 38 inches above the seawall.

Croze is one of the many citizens, scientists, academics, public officials, business owners and environmentalists we’ve interviewed during our six-month investigation on the impact climate change and rising sea levels are having in Delaware.

We pursued this story because it’s clear that Delaware, which is sinking and has the lowest elevation of any state in America, is highly exposed to sea level rise.

We stayed with it because coastal communities demanding government intervention at taxpayer expense is quickly becoming an important public policy debate – one infused with hope for solutions, heartbreaking loss and unsettling predictions that would dramatically change the lifestyle we cherish in a landscape blessed with beaches, tidal estuaries and marshes rich with wildlife.

The overwhelming majority of scientists say climate change is real, as does Gov. Jack Markell and Colin O’Mara, secretary of Delaware’s Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.