Every 200 years California suffers a storm of biblical proportions

California has seen worse: massive floods have swept through the state about every 200 years for at least the past 2,000 years, climate scientists Michael Dettinger and Lynn Ingram recount in a 2013 article.

The most recent was a series of storms that lasted for a near-biblical 43 days between 1861 and 1862, creating a vast lake where California’s Central Valley had been. Floodwaters drowned thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of cattle, and forced the state’s government to move from Sacramento to San Francisco.

More than 150 years have passed since California’s last, great flood — and a team of researchers with the US Geological Survey have predicted what kind of damage a similar flood would cause today. Their simulation, called the ARkStorm, anticipates that a stretch of the Central Valley 300 miles long by 200 miles wide would be underwater. Cities up and down the coast of California would flood. Winds would howl 60 to 125 miles per hour, and landslides would make roads impassable.

...And it could happen again any time: it’s been 150 years since the 1861–1862 floods, they wrote. “So it appears that California may be due for another episode soon.”

The good news is that the weather seems to be calming down — for now. Over the past 48 hours, two to three inches of rain washed over the Sacramento valley and between five and eight inches fell in the Sierra Nevadas, Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told The Verge. At least a foot of snow fell at higher mountain elevations, and more is expected. The winds have calmed down today, but yesterday they howled at 199mph through California’s mountain peaks. Thursday should bring a brief dry spell, but more typical, cold winter weather will follow.

Maybe you are being sarcastic, but CA had boomed economically in 13 years. It was no longer a Mexican backwater but was experiencing huge booms in ag, mining, and railroads. In just seven years the transcontinental RR would be finished. Huge global capital investments in hard rock mines and railroads were pouring in. The flood of 1862 drowned 100,000 sheep and 500,000 lambs. Oyster beds in San Francisco Bay near Oakland were reported to be dying from the effects of the immense amounts of freshwater entering the bay. Full of sediment, it covered the oyster beds. One-quarter of California’s estimated 800,000 cattle were killed by the flood.

Better brush up on your history.

Just guessing, but maybe a canal system would/could help.

Ummm...No.

When a 100 mile wide valley is an average of 12 feet underwater, canals don't help.

However for less extreme events, dams and reservoirs DO help.

Without human intervention all of central California is a desert. Historically, the water issue is "feast or famine." up until then most of the water used for agriculture was from wells. After the great floods of the 1860s, California did begin an enormous plan which took 80 years to create, consisting of recharge wells to replenish the subterranean aquifer, and a network of dozens of dams and reservoirs along the major rivers of the northern half of The California Central Valley.

Fast forward to the dope culture of the 1960s, the greenies and their mindless drug induced mantra... "Environment now!!"

Which inevitably led to spending enormous amounts of money and effort to dismantle a good percentage of the working system, coupled with exporting huge amounts of water to Southern California.

The California legislature for the last 50 years has enjoyed an average IQ of around 60, and the results can't be hidden. The historical record of political waste and cluelessness is available to all.

Now, new bond measures are being pushed almost annually, to rebuild the system of dams and reservoirs which were destroyed 20 years before. With one exception. This time half of the expense is aimed at saving bugs, bunnies lizards and sardines.

Ignored in all that activity is the fact that humans are an afterthough. Agriculture and food and a reliable water supply are secondary.

Also ignored is the reality that when a decade-long drought occurs, the bugs, bunnies etc., are all wiped out anyway, rendering mindless activity meaningless.

Check out the on line California Water Atlas (Plan update) 1979:

California Water Atlas-1979

For the average Californian, the historical sections are priceless, educational, and thorough.
For the more technically oriented the data sections are priceless : rainfall, well depths, river flows, reservoir capacities resulting giant aqueduct systems serving the San Francisco and East Bay areas, etc., are a treasure trove for retired engineers such as myself.

Most of the information of the huge web site is understandable to students as well as curious adults.

Last week the Board of Supervisors here is San Joaquin County voted to not declare the drought over. So I guess I am hallucinating anyway.

A little learning... etc.

It will take more than three weeks of rain to compensate for ten years of essentially a continuous drought.
Most of the rainfall will simply run off.

Recharging the depleted aquifer has barely begun.
Most agricultural wells in the central valley are now twice as deep as when the drought began. Some now in the neighborhood of 1000 feet deep.

Collosal amounts of power are now needed to irrigate the thousands of acres of agricultural fields.

Food.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.