California Drought


Posted by Jens Peermann on Fri Sep 05, 2014 6:39 am

All times are UTC-05:00

Reply to topic  
 First unread post  | 4 posts | 
Image
It's one thing to hear about a record drought, it's another to actually see it.

I was rather shocked when I saw the remains of the New Melones Reservoir on the border between Calaveras and Tuolumne counties last Monday.

This tree had been submerged for more than thirty years. Building foundations from a village that used to be here start popping up. The bridge is 450 feet high and the watermarks on the pillars show where the water level used to be. The level continues to drop by about 4 inches per day, which equals 120 feet in a year, with about 30 feet left in the reservoir. Easy to figure out how much longer that will last; hard to imagine how long it will take to fill it up again, even with an unlikely string of record wet winters.

EOS 5D2, 21/2.8 ZE @ f/5.6
A great photograph is absorbed by the eyes and stored in the heart.

User avatar
Posted by:
Jens Peermann
Forum Contributor
Location: Lake Tahoe area of Nevada
Posts: 5155
Joined: 5 Apr 2004

   

by James W. Milligan on Fri Sep 05, 2014 9:25 am
User avatar
James W. Milligan
Lifetime Member
Posts: 1910
Joined: 27 Jan 2004
Location: Quakertown,PA 18951
Member #:00249
An excellent example of a significant problem.
 

by Gary Briney on Fri Sep 05, 2014 4:13 pm
User avatar
Gary Briney
Lifetime Member
Posts: 18291
Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Location: USA
Member #:00336
Very graphic illustration of the seriousness of the problem Jens --- the watermarks on the bridge columns say it all.
G. Briney
 

by Glenn NK on Fri Sep 05, 2014 6:05 pm
User avatar
Glenn NK
Lifetime Member
Posts: 1879
Joined: 13 Apr 2007
Location: Victoria, BC, Canada
Member #:01120
Very startling image.

I read an article in National Graphic a few years ago; it was based on a study of the examination of tree rings from very old trees.  They found from ring growth that there have been much drier and much wetter periods for the past 1,000 years.

It seems that the dams (reservoirs) were designed and planned using hydrometrics obtained during one of the longer wetter cycles (which lasted into the fifties).  The phenomena of nature tend to be cyclic, and we may be returning to a drier cycle which could have unpleasant outcomes.

Glenn
Economics:  the study of achieving infinite growth with finite resources.
 

Display posts from previous:  Sort by:  
4 posts | 

Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group