California Braces for ‘The Big Melt’

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KQED

News Commentary, News, Politics

4.2 • 727 Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A winter of unusually heavy rain and snow elevated California’s mountain snowpack to levels not seen in years. But now that temperatures are rising, the state is bracing for “The Big Melt” that could cause massive flooding. Close to a third of the state’s water supply comes from the snowpack that accumulates in the winter and melts in the summer. California’s water infrastructure was designed to capture and store snowmelt and prevent floods, but with climate change intensifying water levels to extreme highs and lows, the system is pushed to its limits. We’ll talk about how prepared the Golden State is for an influx of water and what communities can expect. Guests: Dr. Noah Diffenbaugh, senior fellow, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment - where his research focuses on climate and earth system dynamics. Hayley Smith, reporter focusing on extreme weather, Los Angeles Times Nicholas Pinter, chair in applied geosciences, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California Davis; associate director, Center for Watershed Sciences, University of California Davis Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:50.3	Among the natural laws that make California's landscape what it is, there's none more important than this.
0:55.4	The snow that falls in the sierras in the winter becomes the water flowing into the Great Central Valley.
1:01.6	That water recharges the whole aquatic battery of the state.
1:06.0	Too little snow, as we've had for many years recently, means that rivers are anemic, the reservoirs
1:11.7	empty out, and farmers and fish don't get what they need to grow. But what about when there's
1:17.0	too much water? Is that even possible anymore? We know that there's an incredible near-record
1:21.7	snowpack in different parts of the Sierra's, but will that mean record flows through the rivers
1:26.5	of our state?
1:31.3	Everything you need to know about the big melts coming up next after this news.
1:40.2	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
	...

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