Today is Saturday, November 14.
“An Inconvenient
Website”
Learn the Truth about the Subverting of
The
foundation of POWER is www.Bill-Wink.com which is built on the TRUTH
How
does one level the playing field when going against the powerful?
With
the TRUTH
Only those hiding behind a lie fear the TRUTH
Hidden Valley Lake Seasonal
Rainfall Log
The
Journal of William H. Brewer
1860
- 1864
|
CHAPTER
I THE
RAINY SEASON Floods—Sacramento
under Water—The Money Ques- tion—A Muddy Journey to San
Jose—Results of the Floods—The Chinese. San
Francisco. Sunday,
January 19, 1862. THE rains continue,
and since I last wrote the floods have been far worse than before. Sacramento
and many other towns and cities have again been overflowed, and after the
waters had abated somewhat they are again up. That doomed city is in all
probability again under water today. The amount of rain
that has fallen is unprecedented in the history of the state. In this city
accurate observations have been kept since July, 1853. For the years since,
ending with July 1 each year, the amount of rain is known. In New York
state—central New York—the average amount is under thirty-eight inches, often
not over thirty-three inches, sometimes as low as twenty-eight inches. This
includes the melted snow. In this city it has been for the eight years
closing last July, 21 inches, the lowest amount 19 inches, the highest 23.
Yet this year, since November 6, when the first shower came, to January 18,
it is thirty-two and three-quarters
inches and it is still raining! But this is not all. Generally twice,
sometimes three times, as much falls in the mining districts on the slopes of
the Sierra. This year at Sonora, in Tuolumne County, between November 11,
1861, and January 14, 1862, seventy-two inches (six feet) of water has fallen, and in numbers of places over five
feet! And that in a period of two months. As much rain as falls in Ithaca in two years has fallen in some places in
this state in two months. 241 |
SPACE
|
The great central
valley of the state is under water—the Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys—a region
250 to 300 miles long and an average of at least twenty miles wide, a dis- trict of five thousand or six thousand
square miles, or probably three to three and a half millions of acres!
Although much of it is not cultivated, yet a part of it is the garden of the
state. Thousands of farms are entirely under water—cattle starving and
drowning. Benevolent societies
are active, boats have been sent up, and thousands are fleeing to this city.
There have been some of the most stupendous charities I have ever seen. An
example will suffice. A week ago today news came down by steamer of a worse
condition at Sacramento than was anticipated. The news came at nine o'clock
at night. Men went to work, and before daylight tons of provisions were
ready—eleven thousand pounds of ham alone were cooked. Before night two
steamers, with over thirty tons of cooked and prepared provisions, twenty-two
tons of clothing, several thousand dollars in money, and boats with crews,
etc., were under way for the devastated city. You can imagine the
effect it must have on the finances and prosperity of the state. The end is
not yet. Many men must fail, times must be hard, state finances disordered. I
shall not be surprised to see our Survey cut
off entirely, although I hardly expect it. It will be cut down, doubtless,
and some of the party dismissed. I see no help, and on whom the blow will fall remains to be seen. I think my
chance is good, if the thing goes on at all, but I feel blue at times. I finished my
geological report on Tuesday, it is 250 pages on
large foolscap, besides maps, sketches, etc. I have my botanical and
agricultural work yet to do. San Francisco. Friday,
January 31. WE have had very bad
weather since the above was written, but 242 |
SPACE
|
it has cleared up. In this city 37
inches of water has fallen, and at Sonora, in Tuolumne, 102 inches, or 8 ½
feet, at the last dates. These last floods have extended over this whole coast. At Los Angeles it rained
incessantly for twenty-eight days—immense damage was done—one whole village
destroyed. It is supposed that over one-fourth of all the taxable property of
the state has been destroyed. The legislature has left the capital and has
come here, that city being under water. This will give us a better chance for
our appropriation, but still the prospect looks blue. There is no probability
that we will get enough to carry on work with our full corps. Wednesday, January
29, was the Chinese New Year, and such a time as they have had! I will bet
that over ten tons of firecrackers have been burned. Their festivities last
three days, closing tonight. This is their great day
of the year. They claim that their great dynasty began 17,500 and some odd
years ago Wednesday—a pedigree that beats even that of the "first families
of Virginia." All the roads in the
middle of the state are impassable, so all mails are cut off. We have had no
"Overland" for some weeks, so I can report no new arrivals. The
telegraph also does not work clear through, but news has
been coming for the last two days. In the Sacramento Valley for some distance
the tops of the poles are under water! San
Francisco. February
9. I WROTE you by the
last steamer and also sent a paper. I have sent a paper by each steamer for
some time and will send another by this. A mail now occasionally gets in, but
many letters and papers must have been lost. For papers and printed matter
the "Overland” is a total failure. Since I last wrote the
weather has been good and the waters in the great valleys have been receding,
but there is much water still. I have heard many additional items of the
flood. Judge 243 |
Space
|
Field, of Sacramento
City, said a few days ago that his house was on the highest land in the city
and that the mud was two feet deep in his parlors after the water went down.
Imagine the discomforts
arising from such a condition of things,
An old acquaintance,
a buccaro, came down from a ranch that was
overflowed. The floor of their one-story house was six weeks under water
before the house went to pieces. The "lake" was at that point sixty miles wide, from
the mountains on one side to the hills on the other. This
was in the Sacramento Valley. Steamers ran back over the ranches fourteen
miles from the river, carrying stock, etc., to the hills, Nearly every house
and farm over this immense region is gone. There was such a body of water—250
to 300 miles long and 20 to 60 miles wide, the water ice cold and muddy—that the winds made high waves which beat
the farm homes in pieces. America has never before seen such desolation by
flood as this has been, and seldom has the Old World seen the like. But the spirits of
the people are rising, and it will make them more careful in the future. The
experience was needed. Had this flood been delayed for ten years the disaster
would have been more than doubled. The telegraph is now
in working order, and we had news this morning-up to 5 P.M. last night from
St. Louis—surely quick work. But the roads will long be impassable over large
portions of the state.
244 |
SPACE
|
U.S. Geological Survey
Open-File Report 2010-1312 Multihazards
Demonstration Project Overview of the ARkStorm
Scenario http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1312/
The U.S. Geological Survey, Multi Hazards Demonstration Project
(MHDP) uses hazards science to improve resiliency
of communities to natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunamis,
wildfires, landslides, floods and coastal erosion. The project engages
emergency planners, businesses, universities, government agencies, and others
in preparing for major natural disasters. The project also helps to set
research goals and provides decision-making information for loss reduction
and improved resiliency. The first public product of the MHDP
was the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario published in
May 2008. This detailed depiction of a hypothetical magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas Fault in southern California
served as the centerpiece of the largest earthquake drill in United States
history, involving over 5,000 emergency responders and the participation of
over 5.5 million citizens. This document summarizes the next major public project for MHDP, a winter storm scenario called ARkStorm
(for Atmospheric River 1,000). Experts have designed a large, scientifically
realistic meteorological event followed by an examination of the secondary
hazards (for example, landslides and flooding), physical damages to the built
environment, and social and economic consequences. The hypothetical storm
depicted here would strike the U.S. West Coast and be similar to the intense
California winter storms of 1861 and 1862 that left the central valley of
California impassible. The storm is estimated to produce precipitation that
in many places exceeds levels only experienced on average once every 500 to
1,000 years. Extensive flooding results. In many cases
flooding overwhelms the state’s flood-protection system, which is typically
designed to resist 100- to 200-year runoffs. The Central Valley experiences
hypothetical flooding 300 miles long and 20 or more miles wide. Serious
flooding also occurs in Orange County, Los Angeles County, San Diego, the San
Francisco Bay area, and other coastal communities. Windspeeds
in some places reach 125 miles per hour, hurricane-force winds. Across wider
areas of the state, winds reach 60 miles per hour. Hundreds of landslides
damage roads, highways, and homes. Property damage exceeds $300 billion, most
from flooding. Demand surge (an increase in labor rates and other repair
costs after major natural disasters) could increase property losses by 20
percent. Agricultural losses and other costs to repair lifelines, dewater
(drain) flooded islands, and repair damage from landslides, brings the total
direct property loss to nearly $400 billion, of which $20 to $30 billion
would be recoverable through public and commercial insurance. Power, water,
sewer, and other lifelines experience damage that takes weeks or months to
restore. Flooding evacuation could involve 1.5 million residents in the
inland region and delta counties. Business interruption costs reach $325
billion in addition to the $400 property repair costs, meaning that an ARkStorm could cost on the order of $725 billion, which
is nearly 3 times the loss deemed to be realistic by the ShakeOut
authors for a severe southern California earthquake, an event with roughly
the same annual occurrence probability. The ARkStorm has several public policy
implications: (1) An ARkStorm raises serious
questions about the ability of existing federal, state, and local disaster
planning to handle a disaster of this magnitude. (2) A core policy issue
raised is whether to pay now to mitigate, or pay a lot more later for recovery. (3) Innovative financing solutions are
likely to be needed to avoid fiscal crisis and adequately fund response and
recovery costs from a similar, real, disaster. (4) Responders and government
managers at all levels could be encouraged to conduct risk assessments, and
devise the full spectrum of exercises, to exercise ability of their plans to
address a similar event. (5) ARkStorm can be a
reference point for application of Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
and California Emergency Management Agency guidance connecting federal, state
and local natural hazards mapping and mitigation planning under the National
Flood Insurance Plan and Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000. (6) Common messages
to educate the public about the risk of such an extreme disaster as the ARkStorm scenario could be developed and consistently
communicated to facilitate policy formulation and transformation. |
|
SUPERSTORMS "We've always known that the
Earth's magnetic field is variable, constantly evolving in time,"
Raymond said. And those massive superstorms themselves? They're definitely a possibility,
albeit not connected to the magnetic pole ideas. In fact, one such event
struck California in 1861, said Dr. Marty Ralph, Chief of the Water Cycle
Branch at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Earth System
Research Laboratory. "Local observers called it a
300-mile-long inland sea," Ralph told FoxNews.com. The event occurred,
he believes, when a series of phenomena called atmospheric rivers
(http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/atmrivers/) stalled over California. These rivers -- narrow regions of the
atmosphere that move the lion's share of the world's water vapor through the
atmosphere -- are quite real, and they're quite astounding. They can stretch thousands of
miles, for one thing, and move vast amounts of water, sometimes with winds of
hurricane force, but focused a few thousand feet above the earth’s surface.
"A typical river carries five-to-ten times the amount of water vapor
than the Mississippi river carries as liquid, on average," and a big one
can carry fifty times, he added. "Most flooding events in the major
rivers on the West Coast are a result of atmospheric rivers creating copious
rainfall," Ralph said. Using two real storms that struck
California in 1969 and 1986, a team of scientists created a computer model of
what would happen were a series of atmospheric rivers to stall over the West
Coast over a several week period. The results were presented on January 13 at
the ARKStorm
Summit. "The conclusion: $400+
billion worth of damage. So it's raised some alarm bells," he told FoxNews.com. "I can say as a scientist involved in
defining what real weather conditions could come together to create this,
it's plausible." |
“Freedom of speech is the sun light
that exposes the vermin that hide in the cracks of society and the Internet is
a new tool of that freedom.” Bill Wink
Free counters provided
by Andale