STORM2K

Are Californians prepared for "The Other Big One"?

Scientists dub it California's "other Big One," a series of storms capable of costing three times as much as a severe Southern California earthquake.

http://www.cbs8.com/Global/story.asp?S=13842224

It's happened before – Sacramento residents cruised K Street in rowboats early in 1862 after a prolonged storm deluged Northern California. Gov.-elect Leland Stanford took a rowboat to his inauguaration.


http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/14/332327 ... lood.html#

Basically, that would be the Katrina of the West Coast.

The USGS Report:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2010/1312/of2010-1312_text.pdf

The 1861-62 flood in CA is the Grandaddy of all CA floods but the rainy period lasted longer than 9 days. In 1955 in what was arguably the worst flood since 1861-62 and the worst of the 20th Century, we had a Pineapple Express that lasted for 10 days which brought rainfall amounts approaching 100 inches in the Coast Ranges from Point Conception north to Oregon. Ben Lomond in the Santa Cruz Mountains got 22 inches of rain in one 24 hour period and the San Lorenzo River rose 40 feet in two hours in Santa Cruz. The 1955 floods killed 78 people and did 350 million 1955 dollars worth of damage and the flooding was very similar to what the above map in this thread shows. A repeat of 1955 would be bad enough but a repeat of 1861-62 would be catastrophic. To put this in perspective the discharge rate of the combined Sacramento/San Joaquin rivers through the Delta into SFO Bay would be either equal to or possibly in excess of the biggest floods on the Mississippi River or in excess of 1 million cubic feet per second.

Steve