Foreign Affairs

Extreme weather

California. The road disappears swallowed by the flood - Video

The water as far as the eye can see in Tulare between Los Angeles and San Francisco looks like a lake. It was and maybe it will be again say the local media

30/03/2023

Reuters

Tulare County takes its name from Tulare Lake which was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River and the second largest freshwater lake in the United States by land area.

The lake, halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, dried up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because the water from the rivers of the tributaries was destined for agriculture and urban use.

Over the years, during particularly rainy seasons, the basin has temporarily filled. Now the local media are back to talk about the possible rebirth of the lake due to the exceptional rainfall. "California's 'ghost lake' is back in the news, bringing to light a bad story of water," the Los Angeles Times headlined Wednesday.

The video taken by the drone last Wednesday seems to confirm this prediction by documenting the extent of the devastation caused by the flooding in Tulare County due to a bomb cyclone that hit California.

The images show roads and fields almost completely submerged in the Central Valley, the important agricultural area of the western United States.

Last week, about 12,000 people, most of them in this county, were forced to evacuate due to the rupture of levees that caused flooding in several communities in the area.