Weather in the Extreme

For once, California has been shoved from the forefront of natural disaster news. From London come reports of the worst drought in 200 years, a siege that has left the bottom of the Thames river cracked and dry. And in North Dakota, an epic flood of the Red River has sunk the city of Grand Forks and spread toward Canada.

It is interesting to note how these dire events have failed to generate the sort of judgmental preachments Californians must endure every time a geological plate shifts, or a mountain slides, or a canyon fire rages. So far, there have been no public suggestions that Londoners are being punished by the weather gods for the wickedness of living too well, or that the “lesson” of the Red River flood is that North Dakota is no place to build towns.

Ah, but so it goes, so it goes. Periodic quacking from outsiders is a small price to pay for the golden life, no? And in any case, while London withers, and North Dakota swims, California has been quietly at work on its own incredible feat of weather. Not too many people have noticed, but the state appears to be edging toward drought--and this in a year that began with extreme flooding.

Imagine: Flood and drought in the same year.

The rain gods must be awfully mad this time.

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Now it takes more than three rainless months to make a capital ‘D’ Drought. The system can survive two dry years before the pipes start to cough. Still, the numbers are impressive. January precipitation in California--as measured at Blue Canyon, a key Sierra water watch post--was 270% of normal, and much of this came within a single three-day storm. Through February, March and the first half of April, however, rain and snow have fallen at a rate of 17% of normal--the skimpiest output in a century.

Some water districts already have begun to discuss rationing. Certain San Joaquin Valley growers have been told to expect less than a full allotment of federal irrigation water. Firefighters fear an early, volatile fire season if, as one U.S. Forest Service official put it, “the weather continues to be as dry as it has been.” Dry spells are nothing new to California, an arid land. What makes all this noteworthy is that it comes so close behind a historic drenching.

The floods of January, which seemingly threatened to float the Central Valley out to sea, inspired much soul-searching. Questions, for example, were raised about dam operations: Why didn’t they release more water before the storm to ensure enough reservoir space for flood control. Now, predictably, the worm has turned, and water officials are being grilled about their failure to hold back more water in February and March.

Another thrust of flood dialogue concerned California’s rush to develop subdivisions on flood plains, especially in valley towns like this one. Perhaps, a few contrarians began to suggest, housing tracts should not be built within the potential reach of flooding rivers. Just maybe, in anticipation of stormy years, the rivers might be given a little more room to run.

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A proponent of this saner approach has been Jeffrey Mount, a UC Davis geologist and author of a new book, “California Rivers and Streams.” For a few months, Mount was a popular speaker at water conferences and legislative panels. He anticipated that interest in this issue would recede as quickly as the flood waters. So he spoke fast and often: about what he called the “flood memory half-life” and about the too-common practice of responding to floods with more dams and levees, which only produces more false security, which in turn leads to more flood-plain development.

“Serial engineering” was his term.

“Within six months,” Mount told a congressional subcommittee, “most of us will have forgotten the tragedy of the floods of 1997. . . . Even before we complete our supposed fix, we are back at it, populating the flood plain, expanding urban centers directly in harm’s way and forgetting the tragedy of the recent past. When the floods come again, and the damage is much greater because of our well-intentioned actions, the cycle of serial engineering and forgetfulness begins anew.”

He got that right. On Thursday, a man stood in the backyard of his newly constructed house in a subdivision called River Bend. Situated on a bluff beside the Tuolumne River, this subdivision had been swamped in January. Photos of submerged River Bend houses made the front pages coast to coast. A runaway river, however, was not Ray Roberts’ immediate concern. Rather, he fretted about whether his new lawn would take root in the hard, dry soil. Wasn’t it strange, he mused, how the rains had just quit coming? As he spoke, the proud homeowner showered the grass with a garden hose.