*Photo: The Washington Post
After nearly a month of abnormally heavy rain and storms, the skies over California have finally cleared. Its impact, however, remains. Lives were lost, and the state as a whole has been battered and bruised. How did this happen, though, and what do these storms mean for California’s future?
The storms themselves were something called an atmospheric river, a particularly dense patch of moist air that flows in from oceanic and tropical regions toward the north. By combining dense water vapor and heavy winds, a trail of steady storms and hard rain is created. Upon hitting land, atmospheric rivers can create circumstances that mirror hurricanes and cyclones with intense winds, heavy rainfall and raised waves.
We’ve seen the effects of this manner of storm firsthand. Counties within the state have reported rainfall 400-600% above normal values, with the regions surrounding the central valley being hit the hardest. 32 trillion gallons of water descended, with costs from landslides and devastation to infrastructure costing the state government over one billion dollars. Periodic power outages in particular cut electricity for hundreds of thousands of people for days at a time. At least 22 fatalities have been recorded, more than all of the forest fires of the past two years.
With all this destruction, however, comes some good news. According to the
US Drought Monitor, extreme drought and severe drought, the second and third highest levels recorded, fell by 26% and 25% respectively; some agencies, though, anticipate this swing to be cyclical, promising dry months to come. More significantly, the California Department of Water Resources announced that the sharp rise in rainfall has filled dried-out reservoirs. According to the DWR, "The SWP’s [State Water Project] two largest reservoirs (Oroville and San Luis) have gained a combined 1.62 million acre-feet of water in storage -- roughly enough to provide water to 5.6 million households for a year." In December, projections initially allocated 5% of requested supplies to local plants, but that number has raised to 30% following the storms, raising the supply of over 20 local water plants. Ironically, it has come as a boon, a surprise bandaid for a decades-long drought.
The thing is, though, atmospheric rivers are not unseen in California. Far from it; they have been happening constantly for centuries. Smaller flows happen regularly in California, accounting for 30% of the state’s water flow. Such a pattern occurred in October of 2021, bringing up rainfall and offering the state more water. But giant ones like the storms we’ve seen over the past month used to be rare. A famous example is the atmospheric river of 1863. Beginning on Christmas Eve, the storm ravaged California, killing thousands and bankrupting the state due to 43 days of straight rain. We’ve seen what such storms can do time and time again. Now, due to climate change, they’re going to get more and more common. According to a study done by hydrologist M.D Dettinger and Professor B.L Ingram in the Scientific American Magazine, modern climate models promise a rise in both inches of rainfall per each atmospheric river and the number of atmospheric rivers per year. Unequal heating of the Pacific River, while lowering wind speeds, will cause a sharp increase in the amount of vapor in the atmosphere, and this rise in moisture was enough to cause all seven models to agree: the rain will come harder, and it will come more often in the wet months.
Ironically, Dettinger and Ingram’s piece was released way back in 2013. At the end of the eight-page report, a likely future scenario is proposed - a mega-storm, akin in strength to that of 1863, but one that lasted a more moderate 23 days. They warned that even a river half as long as the last major destroyer could cause widespread damage and flood most lowland areas. And then it happened. Almost the exact amount of projected time, at the exact time of year as the deadly floods over 150 years ago. We knew it was coming, and we still weren’t ready. What’s worse, these floods are not exclusive to California. As the conditions to form these atmospheric rivers exist in the Pacific, they can occur anywhere on the West Coast of both North and South America.
Still, I cannot imagine that we’ll learn from this. The weather will grow more erratic and violent as a consequence of climate change, its lows lower and its highs higher, but even after all this, it's unlikely that we’ll see a change in how our nation treats national disasters. In the past two years, the nation has seen deadly blizzards and colds in otherwise warm regions, hurricanes consistently devastating populations, heatwaves ravaging the environment, and fires blotting out the sun, yet our infrastructure has not changed. None of these tragedies are out of the ordinary anymore, yet every time the roads get glazed over with ice or the air broils those unfortunate enough to be in the sun it feels as if we’re completely surprised. We can endure these challenges, even turn them into boons. However devastating the California storms were, we now have water in a state known for its lack therein. But we can only take advantage of these changes if we do not let them take advantage of us; if we do not continue being reactionary when the same disasters that happen year after year come again. The natural processes of the world are changing. When will we?