On a massive, windswept swath of private farmland in Box Elder County in northern Utah, local residents are worried about what “the cloud” will feel like when it finally lands.

In April and May 2024, relentless rain turned Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul into a vast inland floodplain, pushing families onto rooftops and into crowded shelters as roads, bridges, and power lines failed around them. The floods killed 181 people, displaced 775,000, and affected 2.4 million residents.

Road salt has long been treated as an unavoidable cost of winter safety, but the tax it quietly imposes on ecosystems and infrastructure is far larger than its price per ton suggests.