California lives between ever-increasing climate extremes
In the early 2010s, California was ravaged by a very severe drought that killed millions of trees and caused terrible wildfires. That was followed by a total turnaround in 2017, the second wettest year on record in the state, causing landslides, evacuations and $1 billion in damage to roads and highways.
Sounds familiar? Six years later, Californians have experienced another cycle of prolonged drought followed by record-breaking destructive downpours. Dozens of atmospheric rivers have been cleared over the course of the winter the whole state against drought.
The transformation from drought to deluge and back again can feel so complete that it’s easy to forget what conditions were like a few years ago, or how long we oscillated between the two. It has been for generations, as John Steinbeck noted in ‘East of Eden’: ‘During the dry years people forgot the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. That has always been the case.”
In an article for the California edition of The New York Times Magazine, Brooke Jarvis explored how these climatic fluctuations have shaped the Golden State. She also touched on how scientists think we should prepare for a future where California’s precipitation extremes are even more extreme.
While average precipitation in the state has remained fairly stable, less water now falls as snow due to climate change. That’s a problem, Brooke explains, because California relies on its snowpack as a natural reservoir that melts well after the wet season ends. Now more time passes between rains, so droughts are becoming more and more severe. And the storms themselves are more sudden and intense, and therefore more likely to cause flooding, burst levees and overflow reservoirs.
How California copes with this new reality — preparing for megafloods, improving groundwater storage, and foregoing water-intensive crops, for example — will teach the rest of the country lessons.
“This is the reality that awaits so many other parts of the world,” Brooke told me. California is “kind of a harbinger,” she said. “The rest of us will have to make more and more of these difficult decisions.”
She added: “These problems are not going to stay there.”
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Where we travel
Today’s tip comes from Phyllis James:
Jack London Historic State Park is my favorite park and I have visited countless parks all over the state. It combines the natural beauty of Sonoma County with the literary heritage of two giants of California history, Jack London and his wife Charmian. If you are not a hiker or outdoor enthusiast, you can still enjoy the family museums to discover the lives of two pioneers of California agriculture and literature. You can picnic among giant oak trees and hike multiple trails with beautiful views of the Sonoma Valley.
Tell us about your favorite places to visit in California. Email your suggestions to CAtoday@nytimes.com. We will share more in upcoming editions of the newsletter.
Tell us
After our very wet winter, summer has finally arrived. What is the best part of the season in California?
Email me at CAToday@nytimes.com. Please include your name and the city where you live.
And before you go, good news
On a recent visit to Berkeley, I came across it Coffee company from 1951a non-profit cafe that opened in 2017 and is staffed entirely by refugees, asylum seekers and special immigrant visa holders.
Baristas include people who have left Afghanistan, Iran, Nepal, Bhutan, Uganda and Syria following political, religious or ethnic persecution. The Los Angeles Times reported when the cafe opened. The founders, according to the newspaper, wanted to create jobs for refugees that would help them assimilate and feel comfortable in their new community.
“It’s hard being a new person in a new country,” says Tedros Abraha, a barista who settled in Oakland after fleeing Eritrea, where he had been a political prisoner. “But here, in the US, you get respect and recognition. The most important thing is to live with dignity.”