Drought to Deluge: Investigating California's Extreme Winter of 2022-23

Great job!! Thank you.

You need to got farther back in California's weather history. We have been living in a historically stable weather climate for the last 80 years. The weather fluctuations in the 1800's were way worse. There were 5 years between 1860 and 1900 with 100" rain years with extreme droughts in-between. Google the Great Flood of 1862. 100+" of precipitation December 1861 into 1862. If/when California gets another 100" year of precip, you will see a natural disaster that will boggle the mind. Again, google the Great Flood of 1862. It will keep you awake at night.

Last year was insane for me. I love the rain so mainly it was heaven. I do remember this one day I was at school and looking at the radar near my school and saw a massive hook echo around 5 miles to the east as well as a distinct mark on the velocity radar. I remember how I felt in that moment when I looked out the window to a tornado in the distance 😂

Back in winter of 2009 our local weather/news was calling for 1-3 inches of snow that night. We woke up the next morning to 11" on the ground. Upper level lows are a weatherman's foe

The wettest winter in LA post-1884 and the driest on record were only two years apart 2004-05 and 2006-07

"Forecast Was Wrong" but don't you worry, they know it's Global Cooling, No, Global Warming, No, ahhh ... Climate Change, and they know it 100% 😂😂😂

Hey brother I love your videos, I’ve been looking into the Woodward 1947 Oklahoma tornado and nobody has really covered it, would love to see a video

dude that past winter fucked an entire county up financially and it’s already pretty low despite population

Can someone explain why the North Pacific High is high pressure if it is warm air?

Hi! Is it ok if you did a video on the Arizona heat this past year? At least a hundred people in my town here were hospitalized due to heat stroke. Dozens of cactuses collapsed in the long lasting heat. It was in the 70's all the way up until Christmas. Even now, in January, it's still reaching mid 60s during noon. I've lived in AZ for 17 years but it's never been this bad for this *long*, heat normally dies off during October and starts back up around march.

Isnt this happening now?

I live in not cal and the area I’m in didn’t get flooded but we saw a tone more snow then usual

Awesome video! I just need to add, if you want to see a bunch of micro climates in a short amount of time, take the CA-78 from Carlsbad, to Blythe. It's 215 miles long.

It takes you from the beach, to the forest, to the low elevation hills, then up into the mountains around Julian, then it dumps you down a rocky mountain slope to the high desert, which slowly descends into the Salton sea area. Then you go through farm land for a while, eventually you end up in an area full of sand dunes (it's awesome there), and then around Blythe you are back to farm land.

So many climates! It was an awesome trip!

and it (sort of) happened again. will this type of extreme variability continue, and california getting wetter from now on?

One thing about the diversity of climates in california: they're close together despite being discrete. Mt. Whitney (tumanguya) is only 84 miles from Badwater basin, death valley. They're even in the same county.

people in wrightwood had it worse, their supermarket roof collapsed and their roads were closed for days because oft eh snow

Thanks for the video.

It would be awesome to see you do a video about the atmospheric river that damaged so much of British Columbia on November 14, 2021.

It was a pretty dramatic event - check out the damage to the Coquihalla that took years to repair!

I'm on a binge atm of historical weather events and I swear the US is one only a few countries where it feels like mother nature is doing its best to end the country lol

San Francisco to LA is like a 6-8 hour drive (depending on traffic) which is more than a few hours lol

Also i was stuck at my parents house in the Bay Area for an extra week (and was late to my classes by a week) because of these storms! My brother and i weren't comfortable taking the mountain route or the coastal route north to Oregon, because of heavy snow and landslides, and the trains were closed down because of flooding. Luckily my professors were chill about it and we were able to get on the first train North

I think it’s safe to say when it comes to feast or famine. Right now they’re feasting

I’m an active duty Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, CA. There is a very important road on base that is still shut down because of this storm. It adds a total of like 30 minutes more of driving everyday going to work and back.

Feast or Fathom - that's Australia's weather. BTW Great video narrative Steve.

Idiot - actually meant Famine! LOL

The winter of 2022-2023 was also very significant in Utah, where it effectively ended our major drought for the time being. Before that winter, almost 70% of the state was in the worst drought category, and now only a tiny part of the state is considered to be in drought at all. It was the single wettest year on record for Utah, completely smashing the previous record, and some parts of the mountains received over 900 inches of snow.
I personally loved it, and hope that it happens again soon.

Incredible video. This is the kind of info that love

you lost me early,but i watched anyway cause i love weather

I consider events like this God’s punishment for California, the state known for its awful community, economy, politics and laws.

in 2022 i moved from sacramento to tucson, but most of my friends and family were still in sacramento, so i visited them as much as i could. i happened to be there on september 6th during the 117° heat and the power grid breakdown AND december 31st during the crazy new years eve rain and floods. both were such extreme events. in september, going outside felt like stepping into a bowl of soup and digital payments weren't going through in stores/restaurants. the flooding wasn't so bad where i was in december, but i remember after a few hours of rain we decided not to drive anymore.

As a person who lives in the Bay Area, I distinctly remember waking up to see snow on the nearby mountains one morning and listening to some people in my art class at school discuss bunking class to go sledding.

I live in a city that never gets snow and barely gets rain so I remember last winter being crazy.

This is probably a dumb and uneducated/redundant question but, wouldn't it theoretically be possible to harvest the rain from the extreme Winters? And use that as like sort of a backup for when the droughts come?


I mean, it seems that it might be beneficial to try to keep up some sort of water reserve, right?

Next spring here. More rain. Rain every damn weekend.

I am very, very thankful they didn’t have an earthquake in the middle of all that mess.

I’ve been unpacking my room for the last few days and slowly going through all your videos as I go. They’re great things to put on in the background, as I have an interest in severe weather and you are incredible at making such complex things easily digestible while still maintaining both scientific integrity and empathy towards those affected by the weather. Thank you for the videos!

PS, if you’re looking for topics, do you think you could cover the 2021 Snowstorm in Texas? I remember it happening so I would especially love to hear your take on how it happened and what went down.

It should be known that Lake Mead's problem is we're merely in a dry period. The area has been going through this cycle of wet and dry periods LONG before Europeans showed up. Research shows that the Indians would move into the area for a period before leaving and then repeating the cycle. When Hoover Dam was built, we were at the tail end of a wet period. Now that we've entered the dry period, it's to be expected that the artificial Lake Mead, which only exists because of the dam, will dry up. The problems all of that causes are exacerbated by the increase of the population that needs the water in the lake and the power created by Hoover Dam to be able to viably live in the area.

Turns out, a desert is a terrible place to build a reservoir and try to use that to sustain a large permanent population.

Just thought I'd put that out there because people are way too quick to claim it's due to human-caused climate change when it's simply nature and man's ego.

If you want to talk about interesting micro climates in California, compare the East Bay west of the tunnel (e.g. Walnut Creek) , to South San Francisco. Growing up, during the summer it would often be 100°F+ and clear in Walnut Creek, and we’d get to South City it and it would be 50° F and overcast.

I would love to hear you talk about weat her mod ification. Have never heard you mention it and it’s been happening for decades. I studied it in the 90s in my environmental studies class in college.

No joke; between cost of living and the weather, we moved cross country. It is a beautiful state to VISIT. We are rehomed in a much more affordable...and much more meteorologically stable area. Natural ground water. I DO miss the beach, I worked on it most of the time I was there. We camped in Anso Borrego, enjoyed the desert. another place to visit not LIVE.

You know, seeing the Tulare Basin filled was impressive. Our runnoff was so full we actually were on flood watch for the first time in my life. I went to the runoff every day, and the water just remained SO high. They actually had to close a bridged because of flodding. On the Valley Floor! A bridge for a runoff closed because of flooding. Now, we knew it was bad, but when they closed that bridge some of us were legitimately worried. I still do not like living this close to the runoff but, its back to normal now. Dry as a bone! We call it the St. John's River but its not! Its just Visalia's fail safe to avert flooding in the swamp area. You see, Visalia was largely a swamp before the river was dredged and forced to drain all the water into the Tulare Lake. Then they dredged even more to completely remove the water. This is just part of our history, but to see it filled when all of our farmland is . . . .well farmland. Yeah, I felt for my neighbors out in Corcoran, Coalinga and the surrounding areas. They recieved the brunt. Visalia got lucky. The St. John's SHOULD have broke. . . .It almost did. And I wouldn't be here telling this story. Weather just wanted to remind us that we were once a swamp!

I lived in Southern California during this winter and tbh I loved all that rain. I have always loved rain. Southern California, not so much. But it wasn’t so bad in Orange County anyway. What was trippy was how green everything stayed even as winter faded out. It just kept raining, just enough. We went to Palm Springs before we moved and the desert was green all the way there. It was wild.

Are the tubs safe from tornadoes?

Sacramento Valley has always gotten flooded, read about history.

Santa Cruz connects to Los Gatos via HWY 17. HWY 9 connects Santa Cruz to Saratoga. They were both closed. There is no HWY 19 in that area. There's probably another comment mentioning this, but I don't want to read through them. Otherwise good information, but you could have mentioned Lake Tulare or the USGS Arc Storm scenario.

I live in the NorCal, and the tree carnage after the bomb cyclone was immense. Our power was out up where i live in the mountains for 10 days, and they were doing tree work, removing trees from roads, etc, for weeks after it. After historic low lake levels our local reservoir was full to the brim, and overflowing. There wasn't too much flooding up here in the mountains, but a ton of run off and erosion, with mudslides everywhere blocking roads.

This was a crazy event to live through and restarted my interest into weather tracking.
I remember we were planning to go to Truckee to do our tradition of visiting the snow but another low pass through and it was a damaging one for us! A neighbor nearly lost his house because a tree collapsed hitting the cornor of it. We were already worried about leaving the house in the mist of this and that near disaster convinced us that we should stay and take care of things

Repost?

who's forecast was wrong. Not mine. lol!!! 😊

That summer was godawful. In Salt Lake, i think we had like 30-40 days of 100+°F days STRAIGHT. Overnight temps were only 80ish. There was seemingly no break from the heat.

Then the winter slammed in and absolutely dumped snow, i think we had a snow pack of 800 some odd inches. The snowmelt that spring was wild, rivaling the 84' floods in utah from the snowmelt. (In 84', State Street was turned into a river and theres some hilarious photos from that) Rivers screamed down canyons, the Great Salt Lake was at a level not seen in a long time, and our reservoirs were actually full.

Honestly? It was nice. Id take that wnter again and again, if it means not seeing our lake vanish and breathing arsenic ladened dust.