![]() ![]() “In a warming climate, some regions get wetter, some regions get drier, and some kind of do both,” Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told BuzzFeed News. That has some scary consequences for a state with almost 40 million residents and an economy that would rank fifth in the world, measured by gross domestic product, if it were an independent nation. Droughts and floods are set to intensify in the coming decades as a warmer atmosphere parches the soil and then periodically dumps massive amounts of rain in one go, transported from the tropical Pacific in huge “ atmospheric rivers” laden with water vapor. And in Northern California, a brutal wildfire season is over - although the south of the state still faces the risk of flames fanned by the Santa Ana winds that can blow from the desert to the coast through the fall and into the winter.īut this year’s pattern of drought followed by deluge previews a dangerous trend that climate scientists have warned lies ahead for the Golden State. An extreme drought that had steadily worsened since the start of 2020, while far from finished, has eased a little. Mount Tamalpais, just over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, received an astonishing 16.55 inches of rain in just 48 hours. The weekend storms soaked much of Northern and Central California. It came barely a week after the city went 212 days without measurable rain, again beating an 1880 record. On Sunday, Sacramento was drenched with 5.44 inches of rain in 24 hours, smashing a daily record that had stood since 1880. ![]() This past weekend, California’s capital lurched from one weather extreme to the other. ![]()
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