First up, though, it looks like the Californian Permanent Drought could be megaflood
California megafloods could be on the horizon because of climate change
With the parade of storms behind us, forecasters are looking ahead to what’s lurking sometime in our future. Darren Peck reports.
It’s simply a cult fearmongering video from CBS News. Hey, remember when the Australian Permanent Drought because Other People drove fossil fueled vehicles became all sorts of rain? Anyhow, the LA Times pours cold water (sic) on the climate doom notion
For all their ferocity, California storms were not likely caused by global warming, experts say
As California emerges from a two-week bout of deadly atmospheric rivers, a number of climate researchers say the recent storms appear to be typical of the intense, periodic rains the state has experienced throughout its history and not the result of global warming.
Although scientists are still studying the size and severity of storms that killed 19 people and caused up to $1 billion in damage, initial assessments suggest the destruction had more to do with California’s historic drought-to-deluge cycles, mountainous topography and aging flood infrastructure than it did with climate-altering greenhouse gasses.
Although the media and some officials were quick to link a series of powerful storms to climate change, researchers interviewed by The Times said they had yet to see evidence of that connection. Instead, the unexpected onslaught of rain and snow after three years of punishing drought appears akin to other major storms that have struck California every decade or more since experts began keeping records in the 1800s.
Well, now, that’s a bummer.
Mike Anderson, official state climatologist for California, suggested that the recent series of atmospheric rivers — long plumes of vapor that can pour over the West Coast — was a grim reminder that in a place so dry, sudden flooding can bring catastrophe.
“Each of the recent atmospheric rivers were within the historical distribution of sizes of atmospheric rivers,” Anderson said, “It will take further study to determine how warming temperatures influenced the sequence or the sudden transition from dry to wet and soon back to dry.”
Do warming temperatures play a part? Possibly. That doesn’t mean it has anthropogenic causation, other than things like land use.
(Enterprise-Record) I’m delighted that weatherman Anthony Watts has spot-lighted California’s “Great Flood” of 1861/62, because so few Californians know about it. I taught about it in an OLLI class I called “Megageology.”
That winter, an atmospheric river brought 43 days of rain, killing thousands of people, drowning 1/4 of all livestock, destroying virtually all bridges and roads, and placing Sacramento under 10 feet of water for six months. The capital was moved to San Francisco, the state was bankrupted, and government workers received no pay for nearly a year! Much of our Central Valley became a lake — 300 miles long; up to 40 miles wide.
Geologists have drilled/core-sampled San Francisco Bay, plus lake and marsh sediments throughout California, to positively identify the stream gravels deposited by the 1861/62 flood. Drilling deeper, they discovered that similar and even more devastating flooding occurred here in AD212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605 — roughly every 200 years.
It’s not unusual, due to the location, for the People’s Republik Of California to go through drought then flood. However, if Warmists are so concerned then they should all give up their own use of fossil fuels, go vegan, move into tiny homes, and live like it’s 1499.