When John Muir walked from San Francisco to Yosemite Valley in the spring of 1868, he recalled a sea of wildflowers as far as the eye could see in all directions in the Central Valley. At that time, the Central Valley was a vast wetland and lake system where billions of birds lived. Thousands of wildlife species thrived in a vast watery wilderness or cottonwood forests, ponds, lakes, and marshes, with the snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada forming the eastern backdrop. The Central Valley was North America’s most biologically rich area before industrial farming changed the valley forever.
People have invested billions in draining these wetlands and establishing the richest farming area in the United States. People replaced the Central Valley wetland wilderness with millions of acres of irrigated farmland, highways, and cities. The Central Valley is 450 miles long and sixty miles wide.
This winter, nature took command of the Central Valley and put Lake Tulare on top of thousands of farms and towns. Millions of acres of the Central Valley flooded under many feet of water. The flooding has just begun, with a massive snowpack in the mountains ready to melt and no way to redirect or catch the water to prevent the most extensive flooding since the Central Valley was civilized in the late 1800s. Lake Tulare is back!
I remember working as a ranger with the National Park Service at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in the late 1980s. I took great pleasure in recounting the environmental history of California to my mostly California-based campfire audiences. I enjoyed telling people about the wild world of the past; the days before livestock, before logging, before farming when wildlife was free and abundant, and native people lived in peace.
People often wondered about my stories, as it was difficult to reconcile the world of the 1800s and before with today’s urban world. These visitors had just driven clogged highways through endless oilfields and industrial farms soaked in pesticides and chain stores to get to the quiet of the national park, and I was reminding them of a long-lost past that few of them knew existed.
Stationed in thickly forested mountains above the San Joaquin Valley, I conveyed the direct ecological connection between the valley below and the peaks above. Changes in the Central Valley over the last 150 years have been radical and extreme, with humans ultimately converting a vast marsh and lake area into dry industrial farming land. Air pollution from farming and oil wells in the Central Valley has stressed mountain trees, including the giant sequoia.
Yet this winter, the environment of old has returned, in part, drowning some of the changes humans brought to the Central Valley. What is happening today is remarkable and historic, and the flooding covering large areas of the valley will touch the lives of many Americans. It has been generations since people have seen Lake Tulare.
Lake Tulare
Lake Tulare existed for thousands of years, fed by multiple rivers draining the Sierra Nevada, such as the Kings River, Merced, and the Kern. Today the lake has consumed farms and towns over 30 square miles. The water that forms the lake comes from winter rain, but heavy snowfall in the Sierra will soon overfill rivers, top out the hundreds of federal dams built across the foothills of the Sierra since the 1920s, and deepen and expand Lake Tulare.
The Kings River, which flows from Kings Canyon National Park, will yield 3.1 million acre-feet of water this spring and summer. While last year, the upper reaches of the Kings Canyon watershed had 10 inches of snow, this year, there are 233 inches, according to reporting from Valley Public Radio.
Since 1920, the US Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers has built hundreds of dams to block the rivers flowing out of the Sierra Nevada and into the Central Valley. Most of these have been nearly empty until the extreme precipitation of 2022 and 2023. They must let most of the runoff pass through to avoid overfilling reservoirs.
Lake Tulare is a miniature version of a 12,000 square mile Lake Corcoron that filled much of the Central Valley until a few thousand years ago. Evaporation from these lakes influenced rain and snowfall in the Sierra Nevada, boosting precipitation and humidity in the rich conifer forests where enormous trees grow.
How long Lake Tulare will stay is anyone’s guess. It is busy seeping into the significantly depleted groundwater tables below, pumped nearly dry by desperate farmers during drought. Some of the water may drain into San Francisco Bay, but the new Lake Tulare may be with us for years because of the topography.
Meanwhile, a large part of the Central Valley agricultural industry’s annual $17 billion harvest is underwater. The Central Valley supports 250 crops with its warm climate and rich soils, and farmers can grow year-round. Large amounts of America’s food supply come from the Central Valley, and the area produces a third of America’s food crops.
Lake Tulare 2023 is a disaster for farmers and farm workers. But it is also a relief since the 400 miles of aquifers underground are being refilled after unregulated pumping by farmers deprived of surface water from drought-stricken Sierra Nevada rivers.
Whether we will see flood years like this soon is anyone’s guess, but we know that the ocean is warming due to climate change, and a warm sea produces more vapor creating more clouds and storms that feed inland.
According to climate change models, the West will dry and warm, creating more drought conditions. Even with good water years, the warming climate increases evaporation from forests, farms, and lakes.
Meanwhile, officials urge people not to go boating on Lake Tulare.
