Opinion: Catastrophic Floods and Breached Levees Reveal a Problem California Too Often Neglects

For much of the past decade, Californians have been fixated on drought, and rightly so. But the flipside of the state’s volatile climate returned this year, reminding us that “normal” in a land of extremes can be either very wet or very dry.

A dozen or more atmospheric rivers have caused more than $5 billion in damage in the state, with more damage expected when the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts in the coming weeks.