California is bracing for floods after historic amounts of snowfall – and its aging water management systems could be at risk. 'The big melt is now here,” one climate scientist says.
could soon get worse.
And in some areas, like the already-flooded Tulare Lake bed where several rivers dead-end, there’s simply too much runoff to prevent it from damaging crops, homes and infrastructure in low-lying areas. Emergency planners and thousands of state personnel have readied to respond to flooding, according to Brian Ferguson, deputy director of crisis communications for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services. Temperatures began to spike Wednesday, touching off what could be a long spring and summer of patching levees and fighting floods.
The pace and timing of the snowpack’s melt will be determined by the angle of the sun and the air temperature. Swain and other experts think the melt out will begin to speed this week. More than 76,000 acres are underwater already in the Tulare Lake Basin, according to estimates from the California State Department of Water Resources. Dams on the four rivers that historically dead end at the lake will help control flows as snow melts. But, scientists expect the lake – which was dried out for use as farmland decades ago – to grow in size.
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