A look at California’s historical weather
Good Morning, I’m Austerity Jones, and I am back with C Thomas Printer. Today we are going to discuss the soggy state of California.
Good morning Austerity. The sun will come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow… California is famous for its sunshine, and it could use a little right now because it was hit over the last few weeks by 9 atmospheric rivers or as they were known in less dramatic times, rainstorms. Yes, the state of California had to endure rainstorms before Twitter was invented. I know I know I made that joke back in August when Death Valley flooded, but I feel like it is a good time to remind people of cycles, particularly weather cycles. It turns out the weather can be quite violent in California, but it sure is pretty and cloud free and wonderful the rest of the time. That’s one of the reasons why it is our most populous state, and its charming Governor who doesn’t tax anyone but the rich. It is a wonderland.
What caught my eye was the YouTube video of Ellen Degenerate, the talk show host lady, doing a little Creekside reporting saying that the rain was unprecedented. Mother nature was very mad and we should all do our part or something…I quit listening to her yammering quite quickly because the real star was the creek that was roiling (you can see the video below). That does bring us to a very early word of the week:
Roiling- make a liquid turbid or muddy, by disturbing the sediment. OR make someone annoyed or irritated.
So that video with Ellen talking roiled me while I was viewing a roiling creek. How clever. She actually mentioned in the video how it was the 5 year anniversary of another flood that had taken the lives of 23 people in the same creek I think, like I said I wasn’t paying attention. What roiled me was her lack of understanding of history and the utter cluelessness of what would happen to her and her twitter feed if a real bad storm hit, I mean epic storm like the flood of 1862. Jodi Smith did a nice job in Ranker listing the major California floods and we attached the link to her article, but I want to point out a couple before we discuss the main attraction. 1950, 1955, 1986, 1996 and 2005 Northern California and Sacramento Basin floods, 2005 Southern California flood, 1969 Lake Arrowhead winter storm which dropped 42 inches of rain on the small community, and the 1982 Bay Area flood dropping 38 inches of rain which flooded the nearby town of Linda Mar were some examples of serious recent flooding. The 1964 thousand year flood named by overeager meteorologists dropped 22 inches of rain in northern California which completely washed away the town of Klamath River. There are even sketchy details about the flood of 1884 that had only one casualty that washed away hundreds of homes and killed a milkman and his two ponies. Let’s pause and pour one out for the milkman and his ponies. Floods happen as we have discussed and just because we didn’t chronicle them on social media doesn’t mean that they weren’t severe and that the ones last week weren’t also severe, but I want to point out that as Tom Hanks says,
“This too shall pass.”
He says when something good happens, “This too shall pass” and when something bad happens, “This too shall pass.” It is great life advice, but sometimes it takes a long time to pass which is what happened in 1862.
Like current California, the flood of 1862 was preceded by a 20 year long drought. In late 1861 it began snowing in the high mountains surrounding Oregon, California and Nevada and it piled up to over 15 feet, setting the stage for Jan 9-12 1862. An atmospheric river, or big ass rainstorm, as it was called back then set in and it rained from Portland to San Diego, the entire state of California is estimated to have received 10 feet of rain, this is in contrast to the 11 inch statewide avg that the Fox Forecast Center estimated the recent storm dropped. 1% of the population of California was killed. That would be equivalent to 400,000 people today.
In southern California, it rained for 28 days in Los Angeles which couldn’t receive mail for 5 weeks as roads, bridges, fruit trees, and vineyards were destroyed. The Los Angeles, San Gabriel, and Santa Ana river merged and there was an inland sea 18 miles wide and 4 feet deep that lasted for weeks. In Sacramento, the city was covered with 7 feet of water for two months. Riverboatmen traversed up the rivers looking evenly at housetops and the tops of the cottonwood trees that banked the river.
100,000 sheep, half a million lambs, and 200,000 cattle were killed. Estimates put approximately 30% of the state’s property was destroyed and 1 home in 8 was destroyed. Eggs went to $3 a dozen or $79 in today’s dollars. You thought we had high egg prices now, ha! From Sacramento to San Joaquin Valley a distance 300 miles long by 20 miles wide was completely underwater and in the Central valley the flooding was up to 30 feet deep according to Katie Down at SFGate. The true keepers of American history, the Native Americans weren’t surprised as their oral traditions told them that such things happen in California. On top of flooding on the rivers in Idaho, further inland the moisture and air cooled causing snow so deep that it closed the passes causing starvation in the mining town of Florence on the Salmon River. The great snows reached New Mexico and that following spring the melt off changed the course of the Rio Grande affecting the river crossings during the American Civil War. The capital of California was moved from Sacramento to San Francisco and most state employees didn’t receive a paycheck for 18 months including the governor. I wonder if Governor Newsom would be so magnanimous today.
These events much like the financial markets go in cycles. We just recovered from the worst 6 months in the bond market since the 1700’s. The stock and bond markets combined for the worst returns since the Civil War and no one seems to know what is happening in Crypto and when the next exchange will drop. “This too shall pass, as Mr. Hanks would say. There will be unexpected times ahead and we must prepare and brace ourselves for rapid changes. It isn’t the amount of water that causes floods because if that amount of rain were to fall over the course of a year, the ground could absorb it. It is the rapidity with which it falls causes problems. It is the geography of the cities that lie on rivers often at the mouths of valleys or mountains that cause California such problems. Many small towns were never rebuilt after the flood of 1862 and yet California built itself into one of the greatest economies on the planet. She will be humbled again, and the markets are always waiting to humble us by rising with rapidity in ways and directions we don’t anticipate so we must be open minded and prepare for all possibilities and always check our premises. In the wise words of Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged:
“Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.”
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
This week’s financial tip
Go to US TreasuryDirect and familiarize yourself with buying bonds. I’m not recommending that you buy bonds because I don’t give investing advice. However, we are building an emergency fund and that emergency fund sitting in the bank is not going to earn very much interest. But what we can do right now is take advantage of the market. We can earn over 4% on 3 month Treasuries. We can put a little money and a little more in two weeks. And then 3 months down the road we will have money available every two weeks back in our bank account that has earned 4% interest. That is a nice way to build our emergency fund and use it wisely.
On this date in history
98 years ago to be exact, Carl Rutherford Taylor received a patent for his machine for rolling ice cream cones. Joe Biden was pleased.
Also born on this date
Rachel Uchitel, one of Tiger Woods’ lady friends. We want to continue to congratulate Tiger Woods as he continues to battle sex addiction. It’s a disease, people. Sex addiction!
Resources
The 14 Worst Floods In California’s History (ranker.com)
Precipitation totals across Northern California from storm system | abc10.com
The deadly 1862 flood that wiped out and reshaped California (sfgate.com)