By William D. Balgord

The recent severe flooding in California caused by persistent heavy rainfall drew blanket media coverage across the country. Articles frequently incorporated the term “unprecedented” as well as other forms of hyperbole. Did the weather event really warrant such distinctions?

The rain-making phenomenon often referred to as an “atmospheric river” occurs more commonly than readers might imagine, at various times and places around the globe. It could better be conceptually understood as an atmospheric escalator being driven by the jet stream. The diving polar jet pulls with it warm, moist air from near the Hawaiian Islands that is then directed toward North America — where the phenomenon is known popularly as the “Pineapple Express.” Broad streams of saturated air impinge on terrain at higher elevations and copious amounts of rain fall. Higher up, the moisture falls as snow.

It is more common for the polar jet to deviate south from normal in late autumn and early winter. The most damaging precipitation events (accompanied with severe stream flooding and landslides) occur on the western coast of the United States and Canada during November, December, and January. This is how the region gained its rugged topography over geologic time — from swollen streams and mudslides carving up the ridges and mountains.

Consider the flooding rains that struck California from the recent Christmas holidays into early January. A brief web search would return many past weather disasters that should put to rest the idea that this event was in any sense “unprecedented.”

“Unprecedented” status is tough to prove against thousands, or even just a few hundred, years of past natural history.

In 1861-1862, early in the Civil War, California found itself awash in the state’s greatest flood in post-Columbian history. For nearly two months, a large part of the central valley reverted to a lake. An estimated 1,000 Chinese workers stranded on a project along the Napa River were washed away, not to be seen again. Thousands more of its citizens perished statewide in the mega-disaster.

California’s population in 1860 was less than half a million. With more than 75 times as many people today, an event of similar scale could kill proportionately many more thousands, not just the 22 last reported.

Geologic evidence suggests that an even more massive flood occurred some 1,800 years earlier. Recurring mega-floods have happened in approximately 200-year intervals in California going as far back in the record as has been examined by scientists.

In addition to the recent deaths, tragic though few, the heavy precipitation over the last few weeks brings a benefit: some recharging of aquifers and reservoirs. But because California officialdom exists in a state of denial when it comes to solving the critical problem of water scarcity, the benefit will be far less than might have been otherwise.

Hence, in many watersheds, the water deposited by this latest prolonged storm will not be captured to a meaningful degree in relation to future needs. A trillion gallons of flood water have already escaped down the rivers to the ocean. And within six months, predictably, California officials will again be reporting, to the dismay of the rest of the nation, how the recurring drought continues to leave the state high and dry, and vulnerable to wildfires.

Instead of investing prudently in strategically placed new reservoirs, the recent governors all have thought better to spend from $75 to over $100 billion building an unneeded high-speed rail line from Los Angeles to San Francisco through the Imperial Valley. The project, plagued by demands that the railway twist and turn to serve many small to mid-sized towns — offsetting the benefit of its speed — remains mired in financial inertia while money that could have been used profitably to construct several needed reservoirs was never appropriated for that purpose.

California technocrats are little different from their counterparts elsewhere who sometimes appear to wish not so much to solve problems as to perpetuate them to guarantee job security.

William D. Balgord, Ph.D. (geochemistry), heads Environmental and Resources Technology, Inc., in Middleton, WI. He is a contributing writer for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.