BIG BEAR WEATHER LIVE SERIES
Meanwhile, the impact of those extreme weather events is felt longer, he said, with the dangers posed by the series of storms that hammered California now lingering into the summer. While it’s hard to attribute any one weather event to climate crisis, the harsh swings between wet and dry fit the pattern predicted by models and scientists, he noted. “The risk of droughts – and also severe floods – is rising in a warming climate,” said Swain, the climate scientist. “It creates these inequitable preparations for extreme events.”Įxperts warned that the risks California and the wider American west is facing will only get worse as the climate crisis intensifies. Noting the role that climate crisis has played in these cycles of crisis, he emphasized that a lack of resources and political representation in these rural disadvantaged towns has hampered their ability to adapt. He faulted authorities for not helping the communities to prepare better or respond quickly to the emergencies they face. Temperatures here soar in the summers, exacerbating pollution problems and threatening the health of many who must endure without access to air conditioning. The area has also had to grapple with extreme heat. “This is something that hasn’t been fixed despite the large amount of precipitation that we’ve had.”
“For some it is a problem of water quantity – but for others it is a problem of water quality,” Ortiz Partida said, noting that many communities in this region still struggle to access clean water for drinking and hygiene. Peak months for snowmelt runoff in many of these areas are in April and May.Įven as the region races to prepare for dangerous water flows, impacts of the drought linger here. Recovery has been slow – and time is running short. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesĪlong with resources, it will take time to fix levees that ruptured, to drain waters still submerging streets, and for homes and businesses to dry. Counties are already estimating billions of dollars in damages, with millions more needed to fund badly needed repairs.Ī resident watches as crews repair the damage to North Main Street in Santa Cruz on 10 March.
Winter storms that hit the region in March caused destructive flooding, damaging homes, farmland and crucial infrastructure.
Scientists, officials and advocates are particularly concerned about communities tucked into California’s San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural hub that hugs the state’s mountainous middle. “A lot of those communities are the same communities that have been affected for years,” said José Pablo Ortiz Partida, a senior climate scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists, a non-profit advocacy organization. Those can both affect how much water actually comes down.” What officials do know, however, is that many of the areas at risk of being worst hit have long had to grapple with climate extremes, including weathering years of devastating drought conditions and sweltering heat. We may go through a really warm, super dry period that evaporates water in the system. It’s hard to know at this point, whether conditions will shift for better or worse, he continued: “We may be adding more snow or rain. “Climate change has had other plans for us these last ten years,” said David Rizzardo, manager of the California department of water resources hydrology section, explaining how the increase in outlier events has rendered statistics and models less reliable. Small shifts in solar radiation and groundwater flow can make a big difference in outcomes. “We don’t actually know how the snow will melt,” said Jenny Fromm of the US army corps of engineers at a briefing on Tuesday. Even with good data, the intel only goes so far, according to officials with the California department of water resources. The climate crisis has made models and forecasts that rely on historical data less reliable. These types of disasters are increasingly difficult to predict. Officials have been left to navigate the challenges without a playbook. Photograph: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
The community has yet to recover and further flooding could be devastating. Homes and businesses in Pajaro, California, were flooded when the levee on a nearby river failed in March.
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