Water is quickly flooding back into California’s Tulare Lake Basin, engulfing towns and farms, submerging roads, and reviving a so-called phantom lake. Tulare was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi until settlers diverted its source rivers, forcing it to vanish by the mid-20th century. Now, it seems Tulare Lake is back with a vengeance. There is an historic water problem in California —
- Not enough water
- Too much water
- The water is not where it needs to be
- It is often drained to the ocean without being used
- Most is being used by agriculture
- In the San Joaquin Valley north of Bakersfield the project area is the historic Tulare Lake.
In 1983, it took two years for farming to resume, but now the ground is considerably lower because of decades of pumping groundwater to combat drought and the snowpack melt expected to be much higher than the 1983 flood. The flooding isn’t expected to stop soon, even if the rain stops falling. The snowpack in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains boasts an astronomical 60 inches of liquid, which is 300 percent above average, according to United States Department of Agriculture Meteorologist Brad Rippey. As the snowpack melts, water will continue to flood the Tulare Lake basin.
This project explores the present condition of the Tulare Basin, describing the agricultural landscape as it is in the process of being flooded in the Spring of 2023. Using geoprocessing hydrology tools, a slide presentation is prepared that illustrates the nature of watersheds being established by flood waters and precipitation, and how viewsheds and hillshades affect these watersheds on all slopes of the Sierras.