NEWPORT BEACH : Weather Exhibit at Nautical Museum

The parching effects of a drought and the destruction wrought by floods can be found in the weather exhibit now on display at the Newport Harbor Nautical Museum.

“Newport Beach is such a big boating center that weather is one of the things we’re all interested in,” said exhibit organizer Bob Desenberg, who has sailed more than 50,000 miles in various parts of the Pacific Ocean.

The display on droughts in California is a timely one. It explains how low-pressure systems from Alaska and Asia, blocked by high-pressure systems, have failed to bring rain to Southern California. The display says that in the last few years, the high-pressure systems that usually go north for the summer and head south for the winter “have tended to remain north for the winter, (acting as a) barrier to low-pressure systems with their cargo of rain.”

However, Orange County residents can look forward to a flood in their future, according to the museum’s flood display. The Santa Ana River constitutes “the largest flood threat west of the Mississippi River” and no one knows when the bicentennial, or 200-year, flood will occur.

A 200-year flood would cause the river to overflow and destroy sections of 10 Orange County cities within the river basin, the display notes.

“We do know it will occur,” museum docent Dorothy Beek said, but “nobody knows when.”

Historical sources claim it rained for at least 15 days during the 100-year flood of 1982, and “vineyards, orchards and grain fields” were destroyed. The 1938 flood, which was much smaller than the 100-year flood, took 14 lives and caused $12 million in damage.

However, the news about the weather is not all bad. Scientists are now learning how to obtain more precise storm warnings and help protect crops from freezing temperatures with the Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite, which photographs weather patterns from space.

The National Weather Service, a co-sponsor of the exhibit, is spending $2 billion to develop “more timely and precise severe weather and flood warnings.”

The museum, 1714 W. Balboa Blvd., is open Wednesday through Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is free.