Flood Archives

First Drought, Then Flood. Can the West Learn to Live Between Extremes?

May 31, 2023/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Kristiene Gong /The New York Timesby Brook Jarvis

The shadows were long and the wind across the flatlands fierce as trucks and ATVs began pulling into Chepo Gonzales’s yard one afternoon this March. “Did you double up your socks today?” Gonzales teased one of the arrivals, a man who complained about cold feet during the previous night’s patrol. Another man leaned out the window of his truck and offered a more serious status report: “There’s a lot of water out there, but it’s flowing north.”

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Is the Drought Over? Reflections on California’s Recent Flood-Drought Combo

January 23, 2023/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /California WaterBlogby Andrew L. Rypel, Jay Lund, and Carson Jeffres

Early January was an unusually wild ride of atmospheric rivers. Nine sizable systems produced a train of storms beginning about New Years and lasting for several weeks across almost all of California. After three years of drought, the storms reminded us that California has flood problems similar in magnitude to its drought problems, and that floods and droughts can occur in synchrony.

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Opinion: Feds Should Focus on Natural Solutions in Flood Preparation

December 15, 2021/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Gayle Falkenthal /Marin Indepedent Journalby Natalie Snider and David Lewis

Our country faces a flood crisis. More people and places are at risk, with climate-induced flooding threatening widespread social, environmental and economic impacts.

We need a holistic approach to reduce flood risk now. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has focused on building levees, spillways and hardened infrastructure to address episodic storm events. But, by focusing solely on storm surge, they leave millions exposed to chronic flooding from sea level rise, tides and extreme rainfall.

Our country faces a flood crisis. More people and places are at risk, with climate-induced flooding threatening widespread social, environmental and economic impacts.

We need a holistic approach to reduce flood risk now. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has focused on building levees, spillways and hardened infrastructure to address episodic storm events. But, by focusing solely on storm surge, they leave millions exposed to chronic flooding from sea level rise, tides and extreme rainfall.

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U.S. Flood Strategy Shifts to ‘Unavoidable’ Relocation of Entire Neighborhoods

August 27, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /The New York Timesby Christopher Flavelle

Using tax dollars to move whole communities out of flood zones, an idea long dismissed as radical, is swiftly becoming policy, marking a new and more disruptive phase of climate change.

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Hurricane Genevieve May be Gone, but its ‘Ghost’ May Bring More Thunderstorms to Fire-Ravaged California

August 24, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage, Uncategorized /by Kristiene Gong /The Weather Channelby Jonathan Erdman

Hurricane Genevieve fizzled after hammering Mexico’s Baja Peninsula, but its remnant moisture and spin may boost thunderstorms in the Desert Southwest and fire-ravaged California through Monday.

Genevieve rapidly intensified to a Category 4 hurricane Tuesday, then grazed Mexico’s southern Baja California Peninsula as a weaker hurricane with flooding rain, high winds and high surf.

After that, as most hurricanes in this part of the eastern Pacific do when they move farther northwest over cooler water and more stable air, Genevieve fizzled rapidly into a remnant low west of the Baja Peninsula.

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New Data Reveals Hidden Flood Risk Across America

June 29, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /The New York Timesby Christopher Flavelle, Denise Lu, Veronica Penney, Nadja Popovich and John Schwartz

Across much of the United States, the flood risk is far greater than government estimates show, new calculations suggest, exposing millions of people to a hidden threat — and one that will only grow as climate change worsens.

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Thousands Fled for Their Lives When Two Michigan Dams Collapsed. More Disasters Are Coming, Experts Say

June 15, 2020/in Media Coverage, San Diego County /by Kimberlyn Velasquez /NBC 7 San Diego

The urgent evacuation of 10,000 people from communities below two failing dams in central Michigan last month prevented the loss of life, but the collapsed dams expelled billions of gallons of water from two large lakes, sending them hurtling downstream in a powerful rush of destruction. Water ripped buildings off their foundations, smashed and twisted roads and bridges, damaged or destroyed an estimated 2,500 properties and triggered fears of contamination as it swept by a chemical plant and hazardous waste sites and submerged downtown Midland — a city of 40,000 people — under 9 feet of water.

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More Rain, Less Snow Increases Flooding

January 27, 2020/in California and the U.S., Home Headline, Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /Phys.orgby Danielle Torrent Tucker

As the world warms and precipitation that would have generated snowpack instead creates rain, the western U.S. could see larger floods, according to new Stanford research. An analysis of over 400 watersheds from 1980 to 2016 shows that winter floods driven by rainfall can be more than 2.5 times as large as those driven by snowmelt. The researchers also found that flood sizes increase exponentially as a higher fraction of precipitation falls as rain, meaning the size of floods increased at a faster rate than the increase in rain.

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Folsom Dam is Being Raised. What That Means for Droughts, Boating and Your Flood Insurance

January 23, 2020/in California and the U.S., Media Coverage /by Mike Lee /The Sacramento Beeby Tony Bizjak

Folsom Dam has long quietly served as a backstop for Sacramento, offering critical flood protection to one of the most at-risk metropolitan areas in the country. But a few scary winter storms in the 1980s and 1990s proved that the dam and the region’s extensive system of river levees weren’t as fail-safe as thought.

That’s prompted several billion dollars of flood control work since then.

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