The storms in California? Hold my beer...

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Lots of pissing and moaning about how "extreme" the weather is these days.
It's that Climate Change I tell 'ya. We got to DO something.

Yes you do - study your history. These weather cycles have happened before and they will happen again.
From Active NorCal:

Remembering the Great Flood that Put Northern California Under 30 Feet of Water
If you take a look at Northern California on a map, it will show a large valley right down the middle of it. This vast valley, which many of us live in, was shaped over thousands of years of flooding through the middle of the state. In fact, most of our vast waterways drain into a small outlet in the San Francisco Bay, making Northern California very prone to flooding.

The history of the region has seen a lot of flooding, but among all the massive floods Northern California has seen, there was none more powerful or destructive as the Great Flood of 1862.

The Great Flood of 1862 was the largest ever recorded in Oregon, Nevada and California’s history. The flooding occurred from December of 1861 until January of 1862, drowning the state in water and leaving much of the Northern Valley unlivable until the summer months of 1862. The flood created a lake down the center of the state that was 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. It’s estimated that thousands of people were killed in Northern California during the event.

It all started late 1861, when NorCal experienced an unusually wet winter with heavy snow in the mountains and rain in the valley. In November of that year, the snowpack was unseasonably large and the valley floor was saturated with rainwater. That was just the start.

By early December, the Native American tribes, who had lived in the area for 10,000 years, saw the early warning signs and left the region for higher ground. The European settlers, who insisted on building their cities along rivers for transportation and drinking water, would experience tremendous devastation.

The locals knew their history, saw the signs and got the hell out of the lowlands.
And a warning:

The U.S. Geological Survey have hypothesized that these mega-floods come to California about once every 200 years, meaning we are due for one in the next 50 years. That future mega-flood could cause up to $1 trillion in damage and have a death toll in the tens of thousands. It would exceed anything we’ve seen in U.S. history.

The 2022-23 winter storms were just a warmup.  Not IF but WHEN

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on March 19, 2023 7:03 PM.

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