Although officials are focused on water scarcity, the potential for a “megaflood” to rival the region’s megadrought is gaining traction. The increase in whiplash events reveal a need for adaptation to different types of extreme weather
as rain. Bemoan an overcast sky and you will inevitably get some version of “we need the moisture” in reply. But when it began to pour on New Year’s Eve, kicking off more than a week of storms and interrupting a three-year period of extreme drought, this felt like a release of biblical proportions. The usually placid Los Angeles River raced through its concrete channel towards the Pacific. About 1,000 trees around Sacramento, the state capital, toppled over.
California usually gets its winter rain from atmospheric rivers. The difference this year is the high number of storms in quick succession. Once soil is saturated with moisture from one storm, it needs time to recover before absorbing more rain. But the storms came one after another. When rivers burst their banks, soil parched by years of drought could not absorb the excess water, leading to flooding. Tree roots made brittle by a lack of moisture could not withstand high winds and floodwaters.
While officials are focused on water scarcity, the potential for a “megaflood” to rival the region’s megadrought is gaining traction. In August Xingying Huang, of the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, and Mr Swain published a study suggesting that climate change has already doubled the risk of catastrophic flooding caused by a month-long series of strong atmospheric rivers.
These storms will pass, and summer may erase the gains made in reservoirs and groundwater basins. Attention will again turn to. But the increase in whiplash events reveals a need for adaptation to different types of extreme weather, not just water scarcity. Jeffrey Mount, of the Public Policy Institute of California, a think-tank, argues that the Central Valley should be building levees farther back from the banks of the Sacramento River, to give the waters more room to roam.
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