California Wild Weather, Wet or Dry, Nothing New – Are you enjoying it?

These great droughts and floods all went well before ‘climate change’ was blamed for every weather event

Before Published in The California Globe, December 13, 2021 12:44 pm

For those wondering about the recent downpours in the west, from drought to cataclysm in a few short months, here’s some data and history to illustrate that it’s nothing new, and It has nothing to do with claims of “climate change” effects.

Before the industrial revolution, electricity, eight-lane highways, and gas-guzzling SUVs, there was a 43-day rain that began in December 1861 that submerged central and southern California for up to six months.

The highest ever precipitation in California in recorded history was likely to have occurred in January 1862, during the “Big flood“. This was an atmospheric river event like the one we’re experiencing now, but lasting several days, causing 24.63 inches of rain in San Francisco, 66 inches in Los Angeles, causing downtown Sacramento to sink domestic.

Follow for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

“Atmospheric rivers are relatively long, narrow regions of the atmosphere – like rivers in the sky – that transport most of the water vapor outside the tropics. These columns of steam move with the weather, carrying a volume of water vapor roughly equivalent to the average Mississippi estuary. When atmospheric rivers make landfall, they often release this water vapor in the form of rain or snow.

That is exactly what is happening now, and exactly what happened in 1861-62.

The photos below are Lithographs of K Street in Sacramento, California during the Great Flood of 1862 The flood affected the western United States, from Oregon through California, and Idaho through New Mexico.

Today, it is the Central Valley areas that were engulfed in hurricanes of 1861-62 that are home to many of California’s largest cities. It should be noted that a major flood of similar magnitude may occur again; all we need is a sustained atmospheric river event like that one. It doesn’t matter if, but when.

In fact, in a published by the United States Geological Survey in 2013, it is noted that, “Geological evidence suggests that really large floods, caused by rainfall alone, occur in California about once every 200 years.”

“Scientists who created a simulated superstorm, called ARkStorm, which formed after the flood of 1861 but was less severe, have found that such a hurricane can force more than one millions of people would have to be evacuated and would cause $400 billion in damage if it were to happen in California today. ”

If we had another weather event like 1862, California would be paralyzed.

If California had more water reserves, some flooding could be mitigated, unfortunately the last major reservoir newly built in California was New Melones Reservoir, on the Stanislaus River in Calaveras County, in 1979. Clearly, we learn nothing from past events, whether droughts or floods.

There have been other cataclysms, though not as large as in 1862. On December 20, 1955, there was heavy rainfall in 24 hours, with Shasta County hitting a record 15.34 inches in a single day. On December 23, 1955, the Russian River peaked at 49.7 feet in Guerneville, the highest ever recorded there, and a levee broke along the Feather River on Christmas Eve flooding the city of Yuba, caused 37 people to drown.

And then there was the Lake Oroville Dam incident in 2017, the result of a multi-day atmospheric river event, resulting in a total of 150-200% more precipitation than normal in many locations in Northern California. According to a scientific article published in Geophysical Research Letters about that event:

“In February 2017, a 5-day sequence of atmospheric storms over California, USA, resulted in extreme outflows to Lake Oroville, the state’s second largest reservoir. Damage to the reservoir’s spillway infrastructure displaced 188,000 people; The next infrastructure repair costs $1 billion. ”

It was only a 5 day event, imagine what would happen to California if it lasted 10, 20 or even 40 days like what happened in 1862. But, anecdotal evidence. shows that such events have been around for a long time.

The My River Watershed Project noted that Native Americans who had lived for centuries in the area “knew the Sacramento Valley as an inland sea when the rain came,” and that “their storytellers told of the water flooding into the valley.” from the Coast Range to the Sierra.”

On the flip side of wet, drought-stricken weather, there’s evidence of a drought in California lasting up to 200 years.

The chart above uses data from 2007 ERCook et al. research shows prolonged severe drought as long as 200 years back 1200 years ago. Meanwhile, on the far right, the drought we experienced in the year 21^st century is evidently clear and small by comparison.

Apparently there were severe droughts that persisted in the western United States long before modern occupation of California. California’s weather patterns are clearly unusual What patterns occur in the Pacific?, there can be long-term paradigm shifts spanning decades. One, called Pacific Decay Oscillator (PDO), became known to science only in the 1990s. NOAA said, “… it is often described as a long-lived El Niño form of Pacific climate change. The poles in the PDO model are marked by wide variation in the Pacific basin and North American climate. “

These great droughts and floods all occurred before “climate change” began to be blamed for all weather events. Imagine the groans and gnashing of teeth from “wake-up media” and keyboard warriors if those events happened today.

Below is this line: The climate is what you expect, the weather is what you get. California should plan for future major weather events, wet or dry, by improving and strengthening our reserves and infrastructure.