Posted on 02/25/2017 7:47:01 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Guest Essay By Larry Kummer. Posted at the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: To boost our fear, activists and journalists report the weather with amnesia about the past. Ten year records become astonishing events; weather catastrophes of 50 or 100 years ago are forgotten. It makes for good clickbait but cripples our ability to prepare for the inevitable. Californias history of floods and droughts gives a fine example if we listen to the US Geological Surveys reminder of past megafloods, and their warning of the coming ARkStorm.
A 43-day storm that began in December 1861 put central and southern California underwater for up to six months, and it could happen again.
California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe by B. Lynn Ingram (prof of Earth Science, Berkeley) in Scientific America, January 2013.
Lithograph of K Street in Sacramento, CA during the 1862 flood. From Wikimedia commons.
One of the key events in California history has disappeared from our minds. For a reminder see this by the US Geological Survey.
Beginning on Christmas Eve, 1861, and continuing into early 1862, an extreme series of storms lasting 45 days struck California. The storms caused severe flooding, turning the Sacramento Valley into an inland sea, forcing the State Capital to be moved from Sacramento to San Francisco for a time, and requiring Governor Leland Stanford to take a rowboat to his inauguration. William Brewer, author of Up and Down California in 1860-1864, wrote on January 19, 1862, The great central valley of the state is under water the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys a region 250 to 300 miles long and an average of at least twenty miles wide, or probably three to three and a half millions of acres!
In southern California lakes were formed in the Mojave Desert and the Los Angeles Basin. The Santa Ana River tripled its highest-ever estimated discharge, cutting arroyos into the southern California landscape and obliterating the ironically named Agua Mansa (Smooth Water), then the largest community between New Mexico and Los Angeles. The storms wiped out nearly a third of the taxable land in California, leaving the State bankrupt.
The 1861-62 series of storms were probably the largest and longest California storms on record. However, geological evidence suggests that earlier, prehistoric floods were likely even bigger. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that such extreme storms could not happen again. However, despite the historical and prehistorical evidence for extreme winter storms on the West Coast, the potential for these extreme events has not attracted public concern, as have hurricanes. The storms of 1861-62 happened long before living memory, and the hazards associated with such extreme winter storms have not tested modern infrastructure nor the preparedness of the emergency management community.
For an account of the flood from that time see this by J. M. Guinn; an excerpt from Exceptional Years: A History of California Floods and Drought (1890). Red emphasis added.
Flooded area in California: 1861-1862. From The West without Water.
The great flood of 1861-62 was the Noachain deluge of California floods. During the months of December, 1861, and January, according to a record kept at San Francisco, 35 inches of rain fell, the fall for the season footed up nearly 50 inches {average is 24 inches/year}. As in Noahs the windows of heaven were opened, and the waters prevailed exceedingly on the face of the earth.
The valley of the Sacramento vast inland sea; the city of Sacramento was submerged and almost ruined. Relief boats on their errands of mercy, leaving the channels of the rivers, sailed over inundated ranches, past floating houses, wrecks of barns, through vast flotsams, made up of farm products farming implements, and the carcasses of horses, sheep and cattle, drifting out to sea.
To the affrighted vaqueros, who had sought safety on the hills, it did seem as if the fountains of the great deep really been broken up, and that the freshet had filled the Pacific to overflowing. The Arroyo Seco, swollen to a mighty river, brought down from the mountains and canons great rafts of drift-wood {that} furnished fuel to poor people of the city for several years.
It began raining on December 24, 1861, and continued for thirty days, with but two slight interruptions. The Star published the following local: A Phenomenon Tuesday last the sun made its appearance. The phenomenon lasted several minutes and was witnessed by a great number of persons.
After the deluge, what? The drought. It began in the fall of 1862, and lasted to the winter of 1864-65. The rainfall for the season of 1862-63 did not exceed four inches, and In the fall of 1863 a few showers fell, but not enough to start the grass. No more fell until March. The cattle were of gaunt, skeleton-like forms, moved slowly of food. Here and there, singly or in small weak to move on, stood motionless with of starvation. It was a pitiful sight.
The loss of cattle was fearful. The plains were strewn with their carcasses. In marshy places the ground was covered with their skeletons, and the traveler for years afterward was often startled by coming suddenly on a veritable Golgotha a place of skulls the long horns standing out in defiant attitude, as if protecting the fleshless bones. The great drought of 1863-64 put an end to cattle raising as the distinctive industry of Southern California.
For a more detailed account see California Megaflood: Lessons from a Forgotten Catastrophe by B. Lynn Ingram (prof of Earth Science, Berkeley) in Scientific America, January 2013 (PDF here). The risk of such megafloods remains today as shown in the video Central Valley Flood Risk by the California Department of Water Resources and the Corps of Engineers, July 2011.
Why is flood risk so high in California? This video explores the history, risk and government efforts to reduce flooding with one of the worlds largest flood risk reduction systems.
The ARkStorm scenario was prepared by the US Geological Survey, who gathered a team of 117 scientists and engineers with contributions from 42 Federal, California, and local agencies and universities. Here is the opening of the introduction to the ARkStorm Scenario. For more information see the press release and the full report.
The ARkStorm storm is patterned after the 1861-62 historical events but uses modern modeling methods and data from large storms in 1969 and 1986. The ARkStorm draws heat and moisture from the tropical Pacific, forming a series of Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) that approach the ferocity of hurricanes and then slam into the U.S. West Coast over several weeks. Atmospheric Rivers are relatively narrow regions in the atmosphere that are responsible for most of the horizontal transport of water vapor outside of the tropics.
Using sophisticated weather models and expert analysis, precipitation, snow lines, wind, and pressure data, the modelers characterize the resulting floods, landslides, and coastal erosion and inundation that translate into infrastructural, environmental, agricultural, social, and economic impacts. Consideration was given to catastrophic disruptions to water supplies resulting from impacts on groundwater pumping, seawater intrusion, water supply degradation, and land subsidence.
Megastorms are Californias other Big One. A severe California winter storm could realistically flood thousands of square miles of urban and agricultural land, result in thousands of landslides, disrupt lifelines throughout the state for days or weeks, and cost on the order of $725 billion. This figure is more than three times that estimated for the ShakeOut scenario earthquake, that has roughly the same annual occurrence probability as an ARkStorm-like event.
We dont even plan for the past.
Steven Mosher (member of Berkeley Earth; bio here), a comment posted at Climate Etc.
The political gridlock on public policy relating to climate change has prevent the most obvious and easy first step preparing for the almost inevitable repeat of past extreme weather. Events like superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Katrina were warnings, showing our mad lack of preparation for likely weather events. Unless we change soon, we will pay dearly for our folly.
This is a follow-up to Lessons learned from the end of Californias permanent drought. For more about the great flood see Wikipedia and a brief but eloquent account in the 21 January 1862 New York Times.
For more information about this vital issue see The keys to understanding climate change, and especially these
What the He!! is an ARkStorm?
Thought this might be interesting!
People are gonna die because the governor and others won’t pull their heads out of their a##es
And it’s sad.
Enviro wackos wont be the only ones to die.
This is bad.
Bigly rain ;’}
The water rushing in to the pits where oil used to be will lubricate and assist the tectonic plate stress.
This was laid out in a book, Planet Earth, which has since been yanked about ‘07. CA conservatives, come to Texas as soon as you can.
“Watts Up With Thar”?
There are photos from the early 20th century of parts of Orange County, before the Santa Ana River was confined to manmade levees.
Heavy rains meant flooding across low areas from Newport Back Bay, to Seal Beach.
That included vegetable farms in Fountain Valley, Santa Ana, Costa Mesa, Irvine, Huntington Beach, Westminster etc.
Bookmarked.
Not one mention of the north coast MEGA FLOOD OF 1964. Damage in todays dollars would be in the billions. Entire towns were obliterated never to be rebuilt. Bridges and roads were washed away and about 100 miles of the railroad including tunnels slipped into the Eel River...
I haven't read it yet!
Thanks for the great post.
I lived in SO Cal in the 60’s, went in the Army in ‘69 at Ft Ord near Salinas. The rains, flooding were unrelenting that year. North and south.
“”People are gonna die because the governor and others wont pull their heads out of their a##es”
No worries. People will be able to ride and elevated bullet train above the floodwaters between San Francisco and LA in a couple of hours.
Bakersfield and Visalia; you’ll be able to take a bus to Los Angeles or San Francisco which will take twice as long as the bullet train journey.
..see #14.
ROFL!!!
You’re going to heck for making me laugh at this situation!
And no, in real life i dont use heck :)
ARkStorm—soon to be two hours of over the top drama on the Sci-Fi channel.
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