If someone suggested to me that my family should apply for flood insurance a year ago, I would've laughed. Floods in California? Ha, no way. Not with this drought.
Things changed at the start of the year when the weather in California took a complete 180 in quite a short period of time. The thirst is real, just as much as the irony. After years of drought, California has finally found relief in merely the first two months of 2017 with an overwhelming downpour of rain.
When the rain came down in January, everything was fine and dandy. Reservoirs were refilled and the rivers rose to more comfortable levels. Wonderful.
Cars that hadn’t seen the car wash in a long time were doused clean from layers of dirt and grime. Lovely.
People took their self-indulgent “rainy-day-mocha-lattes-in-coffee-shops” pictures for their Instagram and Snapchat feeds (for some reason, coffee looks more aesthetic during rainy days). That’s nice.
But the rain just continued to pour. If you are one of those lucky people who spends most of your day working inside, then perhaps the wet winter storms didn’t bother you too much. However, if you are part the unfortunate population that has to work outdoors, it’s a completely different story when the grim, dark clouds start to bring in the howling wind gusts that flip umbrellas inside-out.
And then the rain really started to pour.
There's been a huge surge of media coverage on storm watches around California and for good reason. Lake water levels are now uncomfortably high and rising. Levees and dams are over capacity. Floods and mudslides are occurring up and down the state. Evacuation orders are being sent out to areas in the potential flood danger zones.
It wasn’t too long ago that news broke about how the emergency spillways of the tallest dam in the nation—the Oroville dam—failed, forcing 188,000 people to evacuate their homes. Not long after that, more evacuations were ordered when there was a levee breach near Manteca, which hit a little closer to home.
Californians have been begging for rain to grace its parched lands and to combat the drought that has been plaguing the state for years. But the sudden deluge took many residents by surprise. It was like Mother Nature stockpiled all of our prayers for rain and decided to finally grant them all in one go. Either that or she’s experiencing some major mood swings. When the weather is almost as extreme as the country's political parties, that's a good enough reason to be concerned.
I’m pretty sure that in the back of everyone’s minds, we knew that California was long overdue for some heavy storms like the ones that have been pelting us these past few weeks. It was a simply a matter of time until the storms would come around.
Besides the rain, the storms brought enormous amounts of snow too. If you were to look at the numbers of the snowfall totals, the results are mind-boggling. Up in the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges, the snowfall totals are topping the charts at more than 500 inches. That’s more 40 feet! The snowpack is so thick that there might even be enough snow still around for the months to follow. I mean, skiing in July? Why not?
California will have to stay on its toes for as long as this extreme weather continues. Now let’s think about what’s next in California’s weather forecast. Will we continue to see more of these crazy weather patterns flip-flopping between droughts and floods in future? If so, what can we do to be better prepared for it?
With the excessive amounts of water, it’s unfortunate that we don’t have the means to store all of it. If we did, it would definitely help during the times of further drought. The storms also serve as a reminder for California to fix up its aging and corroding infrastructure, especially after the Oroville dam crisis.
For now, the best thing we can to do is to brace ourselves for more rain and get ready for damage control.
