A River Runs above Us – Hakai Magazine
In mid-November 2021, a great storm begins brewing in the central Pacific Ocean north of Hawai‘i. Especially warm water, heated by the sun, steams off the sea surface and funnels into the sky.
A tendril of this floating moisture sweeps eastward across the ocean. It rides the winds for a day until it reaches the coasts of British Columbia and Washington State. There, the storm hits air turbulence, which pushes it into position—straight over British Columbia’s Fraser River valley….
What Will ‘Weather Whiplash’ Mean for California? – the New York Times
California is built upon the great gamble of irrigation. Left alone, much of the land in the Western United States would be inhospitable to teeming cities. But we’re Americans — we couldn’t let the desert stand in our way.
More than a century ago, the United States Bureau of Land Reclamation began taming the water in the West…
Welcome to the era of weather whiplash – Vox
California’s floods reveal a likely climate change symptom: Quick shifts between opposing weather conditions. In less than a week, the story about California’s weather shifted dramatically. Just before New Year’s Eve, the state was running out of water following two decades of severe drought. Then, it started to rain and rain..California was battered by a series of atmospheric rivers…