Flood danger increases for Tulare Lake Basin area and Yosemite Valley as temperatures rise this week
A warm spell forecast for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday is raising concerns that the rate of melting in California’s huge Sierra Nevada snowpack will increase, potentially boosting the likelihood of flooding in the Central Valley and other areas as April gives way to May.
Last week, park officials announced that Yosemite was likely to close on some days between late April and July as the state’s massive snowpack sent waterfalls raging, but also rivers and streams surging. A flood stage of 12 to 13 feet has occurred several times in recent years, in 2017 and 2018. The record is far higher, however, 23 feet, during the disastrous floods in Yosemite on New Year’s Day in 1997.
Farmers in the area, and residents of towns like Corcoran, a community of 22,000 people between Fresno and Bakersfield west of I-99, were watching the warming weather nervously. But in very wet years, Tulare Lake, called the “ghost lake” by some locals, begins to reappear. The area has flooded regularly, including in 2009, 1997, 1986, 1983, 1955 and 1938. In 1983, a particularly wet year with a similar snowpack, it took nearly 2 years to dry out.
“We’re dealing with a melt and it will accelerate this week,” he said. “But it’s not going to accelerate to such a rate that everything falls apart.”“Eventually there is a risk that reservoir releases will exceed channel capacity,” Anderson said. Officials from the State Office of Emergency Services have been working for the past month with local officials in the Tulare Lake Basin area to prepare for flooding, Brian Ferguson, a spokesman for the office.
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