All the dams are full, and the land is green (June 2023) (Paradise: farmers, money)

[Podo944]

Originally Posted by SFX

With apologies to California Dreaming

I read the thread title and immediately started singing it!

[SFX]

Then my work here is done

[OyCrumbler]

Originally Posted by SFX

Well, despite the horror of it all, Lake Tulare is doing a fantastic job of replenishing the groundwater, rather than dumping it all into the ocean.

I'm curious as to how much of this water is known to be going into groundwater reserves and how much of it is known to be lost through evaporation.

[SFX]

That is a very good question. The ancient lake is known to never have become a salt lake, so evaporation is not the primary way it would reduce in volume. So, they know it was groundwater drainage that regulated the size of it, meaning it did indeed drain by replenishing the ground water.

Because of the vast amount of ground water pumped from the dry lakebed, there was a LOT of water under it. after they killed the lake. They pumped so much the land subsided by 9 to 12 meters. Meaning the current lake is much deeper than the original lakebed. Hence, ground water is being replenished, and all that water is not going into the ocean.

[JGC97]

Originally Posted by SFX

Well, despite the horror of it all, Lake Tulare is doing a fantastic job of replenishing the groundwater, rather than dumping it all into the ocean.

So is Lake Oroville. Look at the before photos from 2021 and this month. Astrounding!

[SFX]

these two views tell quite the story

2023 compared to 2022

The two large lakes in the lower part, Tulare and Owens lake, both do not exist usually. Also you can see how green it is. And how much snow there still is.

[Kefir King]

Originally Posted by Podo944

I read the thread title and immediately started singing it!

Me too.

[Vision67]

The Beach Boys said it the best: https://genius.com/The-beach-boys-ca...ifornia-lyrics


On my way to sunny California
On my way to spend another sunny day..

[Cida]

If you want another long-term worry, like earthquakes...



The Trillion-Gallon Question
Extreme weather is threatening California’s dams. What happens if they fail?
Dam failures are rare, but when they happen, they can be deadly. Nearly as many lives were lost following the 1889 collapse of the South Fork Dam near Johnstown, Pa., as in the attack on Pearl Harbor. When St. Francis Dam near Los Angeles breached in 1928, it unleashed a wall of water that was initially 140 feet tall, carrying off people and houses and animals before emptying into the Pacific Ocean some 50 miles away.
And yet, as I discovered in examining the fallout from Oroville, dam safety is an orphaned problem. Meteorologists tend to talk only about the weather; hydrologists will tell you only about stream flows; engineers know about concrete but can’t comment on climate; climatologists look at systems but rarely want to make specific predictions. Everyone is stuck in the mesoscale: the realm between macro and micro climate concerns, where everything is just fine-grained enough to appear blurry.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/22/m...rnia-dams.html

[JGC97]

No more long term or short term worries for me. I'm full up. But it is interesting that someone from the NY Times is interested in writing about California's weather.

As long as weather is the topic of the article, I have a bit of news about it. Here, (on Mars) in my city, during the entire month of June, not one day did we see temperatures reach 100°F. That's unusual for this part of the state. I don't think we're going to break a record, though. Tomorrow and over the weekend, things will be heating up and we might see 100° tomorrow and for sure over the weekend. North and south of me are going to definitely see temps over that tomorrow. There's still a slim chance we might only reach 99° and if we do, it will definitely be give me bragging rights. lol j/k Still, it's been a beautiful month here. I haven't turned on the a/c once. Not once