Water, Water, Water Everywhere, But not a Drink to Spare!
4 years of extreme drought in Southern California and now experts are predicting a wet El Nino, bringing too much rainfall here during Fall and Winter. That may sound good, but what we need is snowpack in the mountains and not rain along the coast. El Nino is caused by a warming temperature in the Eastern Pacific Ocean causing more precipitation in the form of rain, not snow. Unfortunately, rain doesn't infiltrate dry and compact soil, it just runs off the hillsides and into the canyons of Southern California causing possible massive floods and mudslides.
How will this effect the landscape and housing market in Southern California? Also, don't forget we still have a water shortage, unless our government figures out how to catch the rain and bank it.
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2 comments:
I would be a little nervous living at the bottom of Mandeville Canyon right now. It could become a river if we get the rain that they are saying. I can't imagine what a logjam that will create on the 405, not to mention property damage in all of the canyons.
Just for giggles, research California Flood History. In particular, pay attention to the Los Angeles Flood of 1825, the California Great Flood of 1861-1862, the Cresenta Valley Flood of 1933, the Santa Ana Flood of 1937 and the Los Angeles Flood of 1938.
In the first instance, the Los Angeles River actually changed course permanently, no longer emptying itself in Santa Monica Bay. In other instances, variously you had thousands of homes swept away, standing water up to 4 feet deep and up to 4 miles from the rivers, and railroads and roads and bridges swept away, cutting off the cities of Los Angeles and Orange Counties.
Consider that all that happened before the tremendous growth in Southern California since the 50's, when it was still mostly agricultural. Since then California has become overpopulated. Ask yourself how many of the new housing developments since then are built on historic flood plains, and if the infrastructure - mostly not maintained due to corruption, PC politicking and incompetence on the part of the various governments - could cope with deluges similar to those in the past?
(On a positive note, I suppose flooding might be one way to chase out the various immigrants to the state, getting things back to supportable levels. And wouldn't it be pleasant if most of most of L.A. and Orange Counties became agricultural again?)
Just a thought.
VicB3
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