How Sacramento was jolted into flood defenseĬlimate change was hardly a top-of-mind issue for most Californians 25 years ago. “Whatever the risks were 50 or 100 years ago,” he said, “they are about double that now.” UCLA climate scientist Daniel Swain, a co-author of the paper, warns California’s flood-control systems may not be up to the task. Since then, of course, California has built billions of dollars worth of levees and dams, weirs and river bypasses, to safeguard its cities and divert flood waters away from population centers.īut will this infrastructure - much of it constructed decades ago, and designed based on weather patterns of that era - be enough to protect Californians from the climate-driven mega-floods of tomorrow? The Central Valley became a massive inland sea. Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his inauguration in Sacramento. They could dwarf the historic flood of 1862 - when, after a month of nonstop rain - newly-elected Gov.
The study warns that just one of these mega-storm events - dubbed Biblical “ArkStorms” - could kill untold numbers of Californians, displace millions of others, close major highways for weeks and lead to $1 trillion in economic losses.
While snow gradually melts, the climate-driven rains will come sloshing into California’s rivers in a rush, making floodwaters harder to control. They say the precipitation they bring will fall as rain instead of snow. The UCLA researchers say global warming is increasing the size and severity of these storms.
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Northern California most recently got a taste of how powerful these storms can be in 2017, when a series of them tore a hole through Oroville Dam’s flood-control spillway, eventually prompting the evacuation of 180,000 people.
Just a handful of these storms account for the most of the precipitation the state receives during its brief rainy season in winter and early spring. Atmospheric rivers form as high-powered winds drag a fire hose of tropical moisture across the Pacific Ocean, pointing directly at California for days on end.
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