And How Can This Be? The Return of Lake Tulare

April 22, 2023 7:11 AM

The Ghost Lake Rising in California - "Tulare Lake used to be the largest freshwater lake in the Western U.S., fed by water flowing down from the Sierra Nevada. It dried up about 80 years ago when the land was re-developed for agricultural purposes." (previously: 1,2)

Historic snowmelt could resurrect 'ghost lake' for as long as two years - "The storms that filled California's reservoirs and eased drought conditions have quieted, but the melting of the snowpacks they helped revive could cause flooding that lasts anywhere from months to years."

'Big Melt' of Sierra Nevada snow will begin this weekend. Tulare Lake flooding to worsen - "The Big Melt is now officially arriving... this weekend. Flows on many rivers draining the central/southern Sierra will double or triple (with locally greater increases) as temperatures rise. Some rivers will exceed flood stage, & Tulare Basin flooding will worsen."

Return of Tulare Lake - "As of 2022, the lakebed contained farms that produced cotton, tomatoes, dairy, safflower, pistachios, wheat, and almonds."

The Resurrection of Tulare Lake - "The rebirth of the lake has brought back wildlife that once relied on the Tulare Lake ecosystem. American coots, herons, ibises and blackbirds are flocking to flooded farmland and roads, said Miguel Jimenez, who oversees the Kern National Wildlife Refuge, at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley."

Tulare Lake was once considered largest body of water west of Mississippi - "It was named by the Spanish after seeing the massive native groves of tule that lined the Tulare Lake shoreline... The Tulare Lake region was the first home of the local Native Americans of the Central Valley. In Lemoore's Downtown Plaza Park, a colorful mural adorns the local Bank of America east wall, depicting what life might have been like for the lake's first residents. The mural depicts the 'tules' which would grow to 10 feet in length and how Tachi Tribe members would utilize this natural recourse."

Lake Tulare (and its fishes) shall rise again - "Imagine spring sunrise on a vast lake in the southern Central Valley. The lake is surrounded by dense green tule marsh. The air is filled with a cacophony of sounds from calling blackbirds, singing marsh wrens, honking geese, and chattering ducks. Organized flocks of white pelicans and black cormorants are capturing the abundant fishes from the lake: thicktail, hitch, blackfish, Sacramento perch, pikeminnow, sucker. Many of the larger fish have just returned from their spawning migrations up the inflowing rivers and are feeding hungrily on abundant plankton, shrimp, insect larvae, and juvenile fish. In the shallows, herons and egrets stalk frogs and other prey, while otters and beaver swim busily around them, each otter occasionally diving to grab a mussel from the bottom, which it eats with a crunch at the surface. Tule elk emerge from the willow thickets to drink the lake’s water and to graze on the greenery. Integrated into this abundance of life are bands of the Yokuts people, perhaps 19,000 people in all, who live along the lake shore, moving back and forth from higher ground as lake levels rise and fall with the seasons and years. They harvest fishes, turtles, frogs, and birds from boats made of the buoyant stems of tules."

posted by kliuless (26 comments total)

When I was a little kid, we lived near San Diego for a year and a half. I guess it was a crazy wet season, because I can still remember areas near roads where the very tops of huge trees were sticking out of enormous temporary lakes or retention ponds. Would have been around 1977.

There's a book called "Assembling California" by John McPhee. Author writes for the layperson, but it's fascinating how even the native plants in California are an essential part of the natural cycle of droughts, fires, flash floods and regrowth. Many plants and trees there are very resinous, so when they burn they leave a greasy ash that lubricates the mud and facilitates the mudslides. California is constantly in flux (I guess this is true of every place on the planet, but California does it with greater speed than many parts of the globe). Author's style is very readable and compelling, though I read it at least 35 years ago. Not sure if it's scientifically up to date.
posted by SoberHighland at 7:35 AM on April 22, 2023 [17 favorites]

Aviation* youtuber Blancolirio has made a couple of videos about Lake Tulare, including flyover footage and quite a lot of detail on the various factors in California water management:
California Flooding 22 March 23 Tulare Lake
California Flooding UPDATE Tulare Lake Fly Over 20 April 2023

*mostly aviation but also very well known for covering California flooding and wildfire issues
posted by allegedly at 7:44 AM on April 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

Do Lake Bonneville next! Make the Great Basin great again.
posted by inflatablekiwi at 7:51 AM on April 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

Kings County Sheriff Dave Robinson told the Fresno Bee that people had been showing up with boats and kayaks, mistaking the area as a recreational waterway.

"The lake bottom is private farmland that is flooding. Over the course of the next few months, we will be dealing with this," Robinson said during a March press conference.

Whew, glad all serious crime in the area has been dealt with and the manmade "disaster" is so well in hand that Sheriff Robinson can tackle the recreational kayaking trespassing problem.
posted by Mitheral at 7:54 AM on April 22, 2023 [25 favorites]

The lake bottom is private farmland that is flooding
So hypothetically, if you were to use a GPS and only paddle over top of public roads, would that be okay?
posted by Pink Fuzzy Bunny at 8:31 AM on April 22, 2023 [15 favorites]

The youtube videos posted above were surprisingly interesting. That guy knows his stuff. He noted that the flooding of the lake is a slow motion disaster and that people would still have time to get flood insurance (there's a 30 day waiting period to submit a claim) but that most of the people in the two towns near the lake are likely to be farm workers. Given that the flooding of those fields means that those people are not working, they are unlikely to have funds to buy flood insurance. According to the videos, when FEMA comes in, they pay 10c on the dollar for flooding damage. The melting of the Sierra Nevadas is just beginning, and this is going to get a lot worse. The Army Corp of Engineers is shoring up a lot of the dams in the area but having an earthen dam just seems like a really bad solution - these are subject to all three of the major reasons for dams to fail.
posted by bluesky43 at 8:45 AM on April 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

One issue I hadn't appreciated until we had floods here in 2015 is that having fields covered with water, say, one metre deep is compressing the ground with a 1 tonne weight per square metre. That is a disaster for soil structure. quite apart from turning the top-soil anoxic and so fritzing the microbiome. Takes years of worm activity for pasture to recover.

I'm a huge fan-boy of Juan Browne at Blancolirio [cited above by allegedly] since his reports on the Oroville Dam spillway emergency in 2017. The billion dollar refurbed spillway is spilling in earnest again.
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:49 AM on April 22, 2023 [14 favorites]

I remember during the 1983 flood getting to tour one of the levees with my father and it looked just like an inland sea, waves and everything. I’m not sure exactly when Boswell totally drained it but my dad remembers the steam boat that used to run on the lake.

My biggest hope from this is that it refills the aquifer at least a little. I think the valley floor has subsided 26 feet in my lifetime alone due to pumping for agriculture. California water litigation is beyond Byzantine, but someone should figure out a way to mandate periodic flooding during wet years. Build permanent levees and lease the lowest land at average market profit per acre and take it out of production long enough to recharge everyone’s wells. But, Kings County being the Trumpiest part of the country, with miles long pickup truck parades after the election. A place where less than 50% of people got Covid vaccinations and less that 16% got boosters, the idea of anyone doing anything to benefit the greater good is highly doubtful. I hope the farmers who routinely bitch about the hundreds of thousands of dollars they have to spend each year on digging deeper wells choke on all the dust when the now permanent drought comes back.
posted by Conrad-Casserole at 8:52 AM on April 22, 2023 [11 favorites]

SJV Water - an independent, nonprofit news site dedicated to covering water in the San Joaquin Valley - on Boswell vs everyone else is worth reading at the source:

Boswell ignored a time-honored flood management process to fill the lowest part of the lake first. That allows rivers and streams to flow freely for longer, minimizing damage to upstream areas. Instead, critics have said, the company tried to hold water off the lowest part of the lake, opting to fill spaces around the edges first.

A selection:

- https://sjvwater.org/boswell-holds-flood-water-off-some-lake-bed-ground-while-planting-tomatoes/

- https://sjvwater.org/poso-creek-water-ends-standoff-with-powerful-the-j-g-boswell-when-it-busts-through-berms-heads-north/

- https://sjvwater.org/flooding-out-other-farmers-was-premeditated-by-the-powerful-j-g-boswell-company-one-farmer-asserts/

- https://sjvwater.org/high-drama-ugly-deeds-politics-and-moments-of-kindness-swirl-amid-the-waters-of-a-re-emerging-tulare-lake/
posted by to wound the autumnal city at 11:03 AM on April 22, 2023 [10 favorites]

earth wants to heal
posted by Gymnopedist at 11:16 AM on April 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Literally 1st.world problems!
posted by mannequito at 11:53 AM on April 22, 2023

> I’m not sure exactly when Boswell totally drained it but my dad remembers the steam boat that used to run on the lake.

History of the original California Boswell is covered in Arax and Wartzman's The King Of California. I was going to read the Kindle sample, but was distracted by the idea of navigating California rivers to Stockton, Sacramento and Red Bluff and found Aaron Gilbreath's The Heart of California which is awesome so far.
posted by ASCII Costanza head at 11:57 AM on April 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

And How Can This Be?

If this is a Dune 1984 reference, I just want you to know that kull wahad but I do wonder who the Kumquat Haagendazs is in this.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 11:58 AM on April 22, 2023 [6 favorites]

Anybody talking of rising California floodwaters should be aware of a historical benchmark, the Great Flood of 1862. The Eastern states were all busy with their Civil War so a lot of Americans didn't even know that the interior of California had been covered with a vast inland sea, from Oregon to San Diego.
posted by Rash at 12:03 PM on April 22, 2023 [17 favorites]

My grandfather always said they chose where to buy their property in Fresno in large part because they'd spent some time a few years previous having to navigate most of the city in rowboats. So they picked a parcel that wasn't ever underwater and built there, and anytime there was a rainy winter he'd loudly proclaim how unworried he was about it.
posted by potrzebie at 2:17 PM on April 22, 2023 [5 favorites]

Sitting at the Fresno County courthouse holding pen for jury duty they showed us this amazing documentary "A Land Between Rivers" funded by a foothill Indian tribe flush with casino money.

https://imgur.com/6qhN0Nk you can see the twin alluvial fans coming out of the Middle Sierra, San Joaquin on the left and Kings on the right, which cuts south of Fresno and drains into Tulare Lake, and also into the San Joaquin via the Fresno Slough when its river level is high enough.

Fresno itself was most often flooded from runoff from between the rivers, the Dry Creek Gulch. protip: don't locate your new city in something called "Dry Creek Gulch":

https://fresnoland.org/2023/04/12/fresno-f/

During the centuries of Spanish & Mexican control of California, extending into the decline of the California gold rush days, the valley was an economic desert, due to its very low rainfall (~10"/yr during a good year). You could graze sheep and and/run a cattle herd, but that was about it.

Then somebody had the bright idea of putting a diversionary weir into the Kings River and running the water to irrigate all this empty land that was free for the taking. With that, the Fresno Scraper, the big railroads connecting the farmland to its major markets all over the world, and thousands of immigrants available to work the fields, Fresno was born.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 4:17 PM on April 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Conrad-Casserole wrote: My biggest hope from this is that it refills the aquifer at least a little. I think the valley floor has subsided 26 feet in my lifetime alone due to pumping for agriculture. California water litigation is beyond Byzantine, but someone should figure out a way to mandate periodic flooding during wet years. Build permanent levees and lease the lowest land at average market profit per acre and take it out of production long enough to recharge everyone’s wells.

I did a little quick Googling to find out what the status of the groundwater recharge research effort is. I found this interview with a UC Davis hydrologist summarizing recent progress:

Can Nine Atmospheric Rivers Recharge California’s Groundwater?

TLDR: progress has been made on figuring out where, and when, to inundate fields for best groundwater recharge with minimal damage to crops. But we need 50 to 100 times more projects than what we have now to make a serious dent in the aquifer depletion that has already occurred.
posted by graphweaver at 5:03 PM on April 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

The Lake Isabells Dam improvements are finished. The Army Corps of Engineers wanted ten days to observe for leakage but realized if they didn't start releasing water to the Kern River, the river would not handle the water load already coming. The lake is, at least a few days ago, at 330,000 acre feet, with a maximum 580,000 acre feet size. It was said there are three Lake Isabellas up on the Sierras, to yet to run into Isabella. They wanted to fill it right away, but they realized they had to start the runoff, because the water load is immense, and if it gets ahead of their ability to manage it, it will take out Highway 178, and parts of Bakersfield City. I live near the river, with some height leeway, but still kind of low for my taste. I sent my daughter a video of the raging river, and she quipped, "Oh is that what it looks like on my street?"

I drive up the 178 to look at the river. The Kern River Canyon is a beauty of steep, deep, sides, rockfall, wildflowers, cataracts, house sized boulders, poetic green in the late winter, excellent reflections when it is calm. Right now it is aroar with wild, lethal rapids, and it is magnificent. The river through town, is usually dry, absolutely every drop accounted for. Last year when it made a brief appearance through town, there was an uproar from water users about it. Now it is a busy, fast moving, full on river, making it's way to Buena Vista lake and then Tulare. There are aqueducts spiriting water to orchards, Los Angeles, small towns to the west and south. It is amazing to see the river in its natural state. Great care is being taken to manage these flows down in the south of the San Joachin.

The potential for disaster, pretty much lit the water people's hair on fire, when they realized there is no waiting to test the dam improvements or fill the dam for the first time in fifteen years, because it will fill, hopefully in a useful and safe fashion. Dry creeks elsewhere, I drive along are also full up. The wildflowers, oh they are splendid.

I took a drive up the middle of the valley hoping to take my favorite byway ultimately over to the coast, but that byway was washed out. Then a small road I wanted to take down behind San Simeon was also washed out. The reservoirs above Paso Robles were looking nicely filled and the whole world was in bloom along there, with chest high purple lupines lining the roads in batches.

The guy in the video seem to be looking at a lot of water management work and pretending it doesn't exist, I beg to differ about that. There have been other years in the last half century, when Tulare Lake refilled. Water begets water, when they drain the surface water and then the aquifers, that causes drought; that is the mismanagement in the situation.

That river though, is amazing, breathtaking.
posted by Oyéah at 6:41 PM on April 22, 2023 [13 favorites]

Makes me wonder about how much agrichemical waste will be in the groundwater one the aquifers full from land subject to decades of industrial farming.
posted by Dashy at 5:12 AM on April 23, 2023

(once the aquifers fill)
posted by Dashy at 5:41 AM on April 23, 2023

Thanks for this amazing post. I live in the Central Valley, north of this zone but still very wary of what's unfolding.

The wildflowers, oh they are splendid.

We decided to take out half of the grass in our backyard last summer, to turn it into a less thirsty, mostly-native-plants garden. For ground cover, we put an apron of cedar mulch around each new plant to help them stay cool, and then seeded the rest of the open dirt with a native wildflower seed mix last fall, expecting a pretty carpet of flowers in the spring. Then the rain came. And kept coming. The wildflower seeding was...unexpectedly successful.

(Did you know that some native wildflowers grow to 4-5+ feet tall if conditions are optimal? Fun fact.)
posted by LooseFilter at 10:42 AM on April 23, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yeah the Carrizo Plain must have gone off like a bomb last month . . .

https://secretsanfrancisco.com/ca-superblooms/
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 11:09 AM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Sounds like Jepson finally got its flower conditions too — it’s one of the surviving mound-and-pool prairies in California and at the right time should be patterned with concentric circles of different flowers.
posted by clew at 11:30 AM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

Every time I hear about Tulare, I'm reminded how enraging it is that some ancient jerk decided to drain a lake and farm on the drained lakebed. What did they expect would happen? But the people who did it were lucky enough to get out intact, and now the people who live and work there and weren't part of causing this problem are stuck dealing with it.

No one should be living and farming on a lakebed. So the question is, how do we equitably get those people out of there and set them up somewhere else?

I have similar feelings about aquifer use and recharge. Why are we farming berries in the middle of desert. Why do people pretend we can keep farming berries in the middle of a desert.
posted by Ahniya at 12:24 PM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

some ancient jerk decided to drain a lake and farm on the drained lakebed

Not ancient, recent. That lake was still there through the 1870s.
posted by LooseFilter at 2:13 PM on April 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

We were in that area a few weeks ago, it hadn't rained much for a few weeks before that, but it was clear something major was up based on the number of flooded fields. 100 square miles at a depth of 3.5 feet! That is an unbelievable large amount of water.
posted by wnissen at 2:36 PM on April 24, 2023