Posted on 02/21/2017 10:02:22 AM PST by BenLurkin
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 Californias Central Valley had been. Floodwaters drowned thousands of people, hundreds of thousands of cattle, and forced the states government to move from Sacramento to San Francisco.
More than 150 years have passed since Californias 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: its been 150 years since the 18611862 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 Californias mountain peaks. Thursday should bring a brief dry spell, but more typical, cold winter weather will follow.
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
I hope that californicate does not flood out. There will be demoRATS deserting the ship and heading all over the USA. We do NOT need the infestation here in the Midwest.
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.
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:
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.
Overdue for a real good cleansing. Wash San Francissy and LA right out to sea and cleanse the land.
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.
Well, perhaps Redding might be hyperbole, but during the Great California Flood of 1862 riverboats traveled between any point of the southern San Joaquin Valley to Sacramento in a straight line...
(Normally impossible)
Ok,I am not a scientist but the Earth has probably shifted several times in the last 200 years.The Quake in Japan,in 2011,literally pushed Japan several inches.
So we are not actually living in the same world,as say 200 years ago.Geologic events would have changed or created new weather patterns.
New Zeland’s earthquake lifted the Seabed by about 2 feet for example,I am going to assume that is going to change how that area floods.
This is a joke. Every time you allow any sort of standing water that might end up in the aquifer, you get fined. They would rather flush it to the ocean.
If you read the article,it is all about getting all the government money possible.
Once upon a time there was Laguna de Tache of the southern San Joaquin Valley.
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2016/04/08/bring-back-lake-tulare/
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