This Is What Climate Change Looks Like
California’s average precipitation from year-to-year hasn’t changed much since record keeping began. But read between the lines and a new trend is emerging. Namely, California is prone to increasingly violent weather whiplash.
Research published in 2018 offered an all-too-prescient preview of what the Golden State faces. The findings show that “precipitation whiplash” will become the defining feature of California’s wet season in the coming decades as rain and snow become an all-or-nothing proposition. The research also shows that climate change is upping the odds of a winter like 1861-62, a period that saw Sacramento streets turn into canals. (No, seriously.)
The danger now, though, is that a flood event of that magnitude would affect more people and more infrastructure. The costs would be astronomical; the U.S. Geological Survey has modeled a scenario called ARkStorm (not my choice of capitalization, but whatever) that shows a repeat would rack up $725 billion in damage. This weekend’s floods, then, were just a proverbial drop in the bucket in more ways than one.
