- Tulare Lake used to be the largest lake west of the Mississippi River.
- Farmers diverted the lake's water in the 1920s and replaced it with farmland.
California's $4 may have ended the $4, but it also brought back the long-dormant Tulare Lake.
This phantom lake — which occasionally resurfaces during years of unusually high precipitation — is $4.
The basin began rapidly flooding around March 12-14, when $4.
The flooding was so massive that NASA satellite $4 Here's what the lakebed looked like on February 1, before the flooding:
And here's what it looked like on April 30:
Tulare lake flooding threatens California farms
The Tulare lakebed, which is located in the southern San Joaquin Valley, happens to be set on the $4 of California.
NASA said the $4 will likely $4. That means local farmers may not be able to plant new crops $4.
That likely drop in supply has the potential to $4, particularly for produce.
As of June, the flooded parts of Tulare Lake spanned about $4, or 113,920 acres — almost the size of Lake Tahoe.
One acre-foot, the amount of water it takes to cover an acre of land to a depth of one foot, is equal to 325,851 gallons of water, United States Department of Agriculture meteorologist $4 told Insider in July.
While it's unclear how deep Tulare Lake is now, if it's similar to its former $4, that would translate to more than one trillion gallons of water that have flooded the region so far this year, Rippey said. That's enough to fill over 1.5 million Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Many of the state's $4 are $4, which is the third largest agricultural producing-county in the state. In 2019, Tulare County churned out more than $7.5 billion worth of commodities, including dairy products, table grapes, navel oranges, and cattle.
$4 estimated the damage from flooding across central California between December 2022 and March 2023 will cost roughly $4.6 billion.
Rippey said crops in the vineyards and orchards, like nuts and berries, will likely sustain more damage than row crops since entire trees and vines will need to be replanted.
$4 sits right at the southeast shoreline of the lakebed. Fortunately for owner Dennis Hutson, the water hasn't flooded his farmland yet.
Hutson said he witnessed the flooding of Tulare Lake in 1983 and 1997. This time around, he noticed one key difference: the $4 along the southern San Joaquin Valley.
"You saw water on both sides of it, but I don't recall the actual roads flooding at that time," he told Insider, adding that this unusual flooding may be due to local farmers possibly $4 in order to drain the water from their land and redirect it elsewhere.
Rainfall and a melting snowpack: the perfect storm
Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River — until the 1920s when local farmers began diverting the water from the rivers feeding the lake.
As for why the lake returned with a vengeance this spring, blame it on the $4 and counting that have fallen on California between October 1, 2022 and March 20 of this year.
By the end of February 2023, Tulare County had its $4.
Nicholas Pinter, professor of applied geosciences and associate director of the $4 at the University of California Davis, described Tulare Lake to Insider as "a bathtub without a drain."
"Statewide, most flooding was concentrated in low spots in the topography, like Tulare Lake," he said during his May 23 testimony at the California Committee on Agriculture Assembly, which he shared with Insider. "After weeks of rain, the water had basically nowhere else to go."
Meanwhile, the Southern Sierra Nevada snowpack $4 — a record high.
Here's what the snowpack looked like in March 2022:
Compared to March 2023:
Tulare Lake began to reappear this March, before $4 started meltin. But as temperatures rise into summer and the snowpack begins to melt, that water flows into the Southern Central Valley, Rippey said.
"If the snow melts too quickly, then the valley cannot drain it and Tulare Lake fills," he told Insider. "That's what is happening now. The lake has been sustained — and even further enlarged — during the snow-melt season."
It's hard to predict how long the lake will remain, but given the $4, Rippey said climatological odds are tilted toward another wet winter — which could sustain Tulare Lake into 2024 or beyond.