(With expanded coverage of all the Western States)
by Patrick Ruckert
www.californiadroughtupdate.org/20230330-California-Water-and-Infrastructure-Report.pdf
A Note to Readers
Yes, we have a “record” snowpack, that when it melts later this Spring and Summer, will cause further flooding; and yes the sky has dropped trillions of gallons of water on the state, but the media narrative that that breaks all records is nonsense.
The series of atmospheric rivers, beginning in November, 1861, and continuing into January, 1862 set the record. What the media is reporting is within the time frame of when accurate measurements began. Some areas began taking accurate measurements back in the 1890s and, for other areas of the entire state, only since the 1950s.
A little more on the 1861-2 flood. It not only hit California, but all the western states experienced it, with death and destruction widespread from Washington and Oregon, and even in Utah. The snowpack in the Sierras probably matched or exceeded this winter’s snowpack, and then a warm rain began to melt it.
The Central Valley became a lake, 300 miles long and 20 miles wide, with a depth that ranged up to 30 feet. As the photo above shows, Sacramento was under ten to 20 feet of water for months.
It rained for 28 days in Los Angeles, totaling about 50-60 inches, four times the annual rainfall average today of 15 inches. Extensive flooding in southern California was almost as destructive as that in the northern part of the state.
Paleoclimatologists have found evidence that such storms occur about every 100 to 200 years in California. Below is a map from 1830 showing the Central Valley similarly flooded to that of 1862.
So, while today’s flooding is obviously more destructive to infrastructure, cities, towns and agriculture, than that of 1862, it is simply because of a much larger population now.
It was not climate change in 1962, it was, and is today, the natural periodic climatic shifts that have been the history of the planet since the Earth was formed.
The rest of this week’s report
First the U.S. Drought Monitor for California, which shows the drought slowing fading away. Though, even as there is more effort to capture the abundant water on the ground to send to the aquifers, still, the groundwater deficit will take years to replenish, and that depends on having at least an average year of precipitation.
Next, a few articles on Drought, Flooding, Reservoirs, and the Snow Pack. Last week I included many articles, and there is no need to repeat that this week.
On the Colorado River, even while an abundant snowpack in the Rocky Mountains is welcome, it will do little to refill Lake Mead and Lake Powell. Meanwhile, everyone is holding their breath for April 1. That is the date the Bureau of Reclamation is to announce its plan for conserving two to four million acre feet a year, beginning this year from the flow of the river and the reservoirs. What to expect is anyone’s guess, but I suspect that California will be required to lower its withdraws from the river for far more than the 400,000 acre feet that it has pledged.
Finally, the Feature this week is an item from LaRouche PAC, which addresses the ongoing banking meltdown, which threatens a bigger crash than 2008, and the policies that must be implemented now: “The Principles We Must Use in the Banking Crisis—Starting with ‘People First.’”
