Scientists Forsee Possible Super-Storm In California

Scientists who studied historic storms to understand the risks modern California faces discussed on Friday a developing scaling system to measure the intensity of an atmospheric river — a huge hose-like flow of Pacific Ocean moisture into the state.

A storm scenario released by the U.S. Geological Survey this week says such a storm has the potential to cause flood damage to a quarter of the houses in the state.

The report, based on computer models analyzing the impacts of two storms that soaked the state in 1969 and 1986, describes a storm lasting more than 40 days and dumping up to 10 feet of rain.

A team of 117 scientists, engineers, lifeline operators, emergency planners and insurance experts worked for two years on the project for the purpose of emergency planning. They named the weather event “ARkStorm,” after an intense atmospheric river storm that would overwhelm the state’s flood protection system, cause massive flooding, hundreds of landslides and serious damage in the state’s major population centers.

“We create these scenarios to understand what are the implication of the types of very rare events that science tell us has to happen in our future,” Lucy Jones, chief scientist of the USGS Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project, said following a symposium with the researchers at the University of California, Davis.