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| El Nino for President
Banner, Berkeley, 2015 Courtesy of Alison Moore |
Even as wary Californians fear that the promised El Nino may be slipping away, the old adage, "Be careful what you wish for,” comes to mind. The water story in the settled West has often been one of feast or famine: punishing drought followed by often damaging and deadly floods.
Among California’s most notorious weather events was the “Great Flood” of 1861–62, then the largest in the recorded history of the West and, as the New York Times reported, the “most disastrous flood that has occurred since its settlement by white men.” Although it did not occur in an El Nino year, a perfect storm of conditions conspired to create . . . the perfect storm.