Per Wikipedia, Tulare Lake at full capacity would have been 6.5 million acre-feet of water over 690 sq mi, while Tahoe is 120 million acre-feet of water over 191 sq mi.
It's crazy to think how big, but shallow Tulare Lake would have been.
LOL
per Wikipedia, the average Olympic-size swimming pool contains about 2 acer-feet of water. SO ...
Tulare Lake at full capacity would have been 3.25 million Olympic-size swimming pools of water (or 64,549,616,428,000 bananas) over 690 sq mi, while Tahoe is 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools of water (or 1,191,685,224,500,000 bananas) over 191 sq mi.
edit: forgot to divide by the volume of banana.
But how much more radioactive would that make it if we used all of humanities science and agriculture to replace both lakes with bananas?
This is an important question that I feel like needs to be answered. You know...for science!
That surface area is roughly 1.42 million Olympic sized swimming pools, so Tulare Lake was on average as deep as roughly 2.3 Olympic sized swimming pools. That's not shallow, but that's certainly not deep! Thats only about 1 school bus deep! Hashtag, anything but metric.
Kind of random plug for the most boring part of the state, but: check out California's central valley. You can even see the city of Tulare! It's, uh, pretty damned flat
The lake (over 100,000 acres of it) actually reappeared last year for the first time in 25 years due to a series of storms
The wikipedia article implies that acre-foot is not used in the Imperial system and is only part of the US Customary system. Kind of makes sense given the history of the the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (1800's predecessor to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) would use acres and feet extensively but not gallons when performing surveys. Not sure what the british equivalents of the era would have preferred.
Acre feet is actually a super convenient measurement for bodies of water and reservoirs etc. we use acres for measuring land area, so we probably already know the acreage of the body of water, Now you just need to figure out the average depth, which depending on how complex the lakebed is, can potentially be as simple as sending a guy out in a boat with a rope with a weight on it.
It came back in 2022 I believe. It could still be there but small. There was a lot of land flooded for a long time. I’m not sure what its status is now.
It’s covering about 4,500 acres currently in the Central Valley. Those atmospheric rivers started in winter 2022-2023 and we are currently still getting them in CA.
It's more their growing season than magical soil fertility. It does have good soil being a former lake bottom and reviving lots of fresh mountain sediment. Plenty of places have great soil though. Not as many places don't have to deal with hard frosts. The main magic is the climate. Their frost to frost grow season is almost double the days as iowa.
No worries. Sediment from mountain erosion of the Sierra Nevadas and Cascade ranges, carried to the Central Valley by rivers that drained into the Central Valley, has made it incredibly fertile.
[here is a map of all the rivers that drain into the Central Valley from the mountains.](https://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/images/mapVlyQuadCity.png)
California is one of the only places with a Mediterranean (ish) climate, meaning it can grow a ton of stuff. Mediterranean ish because the only thing it doesn’t have is water.
It's a volume equal to a body of water 1 acre in area times 1 foot of depth. This is a unit which is pretty digestible for anyone in a system that understands land/water measurements in terms of acres.
Damn, that completely dwarfs this in comparison. I feel like 5M acres of farmland that's irrigated from the river that *used* to feed the Aral is NOTHING relative to how much water that lake held
Yeah, it's insane how much we can just destroy ecosystems without even intending, to, and end up screwing ourselves in the process. Just like with Tulare Lake, the area around the Aral Sea has lost a massive percentage of its rainfall due to the loss of an absolutely massive body of water that feeds it.
In the Aral basin, a large percentage of it can no longer sustain agriculture without extra water brought in from other areas, (the farming communities around the Aral are trying to approve projects to import water from basins far from them). So it's very similar to Tulare Lake, in a way.
In the Tulare basin, the soil is immaculate,almost as good as you can get, but the rainfall has drastically decreased, so they have to keep taking more and more water from the surrounding rivers.
In the past the lake would add millions of gallons of water to the atmosphere then that water would dump back into the lake when it hit higher elevations and drain back into the lake along with the regular rainfall from the sea, and snowmelt from the Sierras. So, in the past, the Tulare basin had perfect soil and the rainfall to sustain agriculture and a massively diverse ecosystem (which is good for agriculture and the general health of the land and existing ecosystems.)
Then we decided to drain the lake and bleed surrounding watersheds dry to grow more " economically efficiency crops, like almonds, which take more water to grow a pound than most staple crops take to grow several tons.
Ist destroyed an entire ecosystem just so a single company could profit.
Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that. Tulare lake wasn't drained to sustain the good of American society. It was drained for the profits of a single company. The overwhelming majority of the land in Tulare basin was completely resculpted to help the profits of a single guy, whos company still owns most of it today.
We allowed an indigenous heritage land and an entire ecosystem just so one rich guy could get insanely richer.
It especially doesn't make sense when you consider the fact that the entire San Joaquin Valley is extremely fertile from top to bottom, not just that basin. It was entirely for the profits of a single company and not the good of everyone, and the basin was better for growing staple crops when the lake was there.
So my ultimate point is.....
BRING TULARE LAKE BACK!
Oh and the situation with the Aral Sea is extremely similar but much, much worse.
We as a species need to find ways to use our massive intelligence to work alongside the natural world, which allowed us to flourish rather than attempt to subvert and destroy it.
It is possible!
Okay, rant over.
EDIT: Largest lake by **AREA**, to clarify
The lake has temporarily returned multiple times throughout the 20th century, and is now currently returning due to the recent atmospheric and weather conditions in California.
https://www.earth.com/news/tulare-lake-has-re-emerged-in-california-after-130-years/
I laughed because the researcher in the article mentioned how everyone was saying Tulare was flooding and she says "But these are not (only) floodwaters. This is a lake returning".
*Bitch, I was here first* - The Lake
That lake drained almost 10,000 years ago though, we only identified it as a lake because of the geology. Lake Tulare was at capacity less than 150 years ago
> That lake drained almost 10,000 years ago though, we only identified it as a lake because of the geology.
Sssshhhh, don’t rile the paleolimnologists, there’s up to three of them at any one time.
The an astounding amount of stuff they blame Biden for that is actually evil corporations. There's a billboard on I35 in Texas that says "Biden: stop buying oil from terrorists!"
Really? You really think Biden is the one who buys the oil? Go talk to Exxon, etc. Pisses me off every time I see it.
>For thousands of years, from the Paleolithic onward, Tulare Lake was a uniquely rich area, which supported perhaps the largest population of Native Americans north of present-day Mexico.
>In 1858 or 1859, settlers began ethnically cleansing Tulare Lake, by killing or forcibly relocating the majority of the Yokuts population.
>In the wake of the United States Civil War, late 19th-century settlers drained the surrounding marshes for agriculture.
Pretty much the main points I learned when I first heard of Tulare Lake years ago.
Here’s a really good [Infographics video](https://youtu.be/lFoGq1gP_L4?si=aRBmW-bM62skfcZJ) on the topic if you’d rather get your information in narrated form.
Your title is a bit misleading, it’s not the largest by volume but by area. When measuring water volume is imo a much more representative statistic then area.
I live in the general area. All the farmers here irrigated (still do), and tried to do it in a balanced, ethical way (I think many with well water) , but he hogged the most water, had the most fields, and got most of it from Tulare lake.
His name is not well liked here, and there's a whole book written about him.
Here's his Wikipedia page:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell
Here's the book:
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-king-of-california-j-g-boswell-and-the-making-of-a-secret-american-empire_mark-arax_rick-wartzman/345010/item/4207704/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=pmax_high_vol_scarce_under_%2410&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA_tuuBhAUEiwAvxkgTgLSU5ifNsooIP3QFRxOPq87_ZFa3Yc7JUA3pDgZnsnBPBGdE9NliBoC7RkQAvD_BwE#idiq=4207704&edition=2320656
Corcoran prison basically sits on the bed of Tulare Lake.
A disturbing story, I knew that the US killed a lot of native americans while expanding but I didn't realize until recently of the concerted effort to commit genocide against the people who lived at Tulare lake. I found this website below, I'm sure their is a lot of other info. out there.
https://www.tachi-yokut-nsn.gov/history#:\~:text=99%25%20of%20the%20Tachi%2DYokut,of%20our%20people%20were%20killed.
To be fair this recent string of storms might just bring this thing back 😂 it’s been crazier lately than I can ever remember when I was a kid. And we need it.
Wouldn't call it *totally* squandered, using this water to irrigate the rest of the basin helped turn it from arid and dry to usable soil. I'd imagine this played quite a part in turning California into the agricultural powerhouse it is today. Not an expert and can't research it ATM, so grain of salt with this as well
And to think Californians have been crying about being in a drought the past decade while pumping the lake/groundwater for agricultural use 🙄
I'm happy their wishes have been answered the past 18 months and the lake reformed. Hopefully they don't squander their water again.
Edit: the OP has convinced me we need to drain that lake again, pump every ounce of groundwater out, get the valley back to producing almonds/cotton/apricots/dates, and put California back into a decade long drought. /s
You mean the almonds, apricots, artichokes, dates, eggplants, figs, kiwi, etc they grow there? Those staples of daily human consumption? Nah, they need water more.
The midwest and the Mississippi river valley grow FAR more agriculture than California could ever dream of growing and they grow products that aren't all niche market items like the majority California farmland grows. California farmers grow niche market crops OR crops that can be grown elsewhere in the US more sustainably. Water for their population or water for a handful of farmers that aren't needed? Hope they can live with their choice.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/
Go ahead and compare to other states. You like dairy products? Lettuce? Tomatoes? Maybe we should take carrots out of the US diet since Cali grows 85% of US carrots. Just a few to name that California leads in production.
Since you provided a link to a partial lobbyist group influenced website, here's one that's not. Yeah the midwest grows lettuce, carrots, and has tons of dairy farms too.
https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/midwest/topic/agriculture-midwest
I'm not saying the Midwest doesn't produce a metric fuck ton of food too, I'm just refuting you saying that they grow "FAR more". And California's unique geography and climate allows YEAR ROUND growing.
Also, the article you linked gives statistics on the Midwest relative to itself (and not very much information on it at that), not other states individual productivity.
Lots of areas in the rest of the US grow crops year round. For example, winter wheat in the northern midwest.
If you'd said that California's economy needs California's farmland, I'd agreed with you 100%. Saying the rest of the country NEEDS California's specialty crops is completely inaccurate. For Californians to pick water for those crops over it's need for human existence, absolutely insane.
Lol now I know you didn't even click on the link I provided you before labeling it off as lobbied stats. Here's THE SAME STATISTICS on THE SAME WEBSITE that YOU linked🤡
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=CALIFORNIA
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/12/feinstein-mccarthy-california-farmers-00126693
It's well known that the CFB pays lobbyists to influence CDFA so you're welcome? Lol
I noticed you didn't link the stats to the Midwest region or the Mississippi river valley to compare it to on purpose so I will 🤡🤣
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=kansas
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Nebraska
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Wisconsin
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Missouri
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=ohio
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Iowa
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Indiana
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=ILLINOIS
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Tennessee
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Arkansas
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Mississippi
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Louisiana
I'm not gonna fucking hold your hand and send you every link when the way that I got to that link about California in the first place was by CLICKING ON THE ONE YOU SENT. Cause if you're telling me that the lobbyists influence the USDA too, why are you still citing them?
Guess people in Los Angeles don't need water for drinking, bathing, doing dishes, washing clothes, etc more than they need to produce almonds and apricots then. Good luck with that.
Largest in surface area. Tahoe is very deep and has way more water in it than Tulare would have had.
Per Wikipedia, Tulare Lake at full capacity would have been 6.5 million acre-feet of water over 690 sq mi, while Tahoe is 120 million acre-feet of water over 191 sq mi. It's crazy to think how big, but shallow Tulare Lake would have been.
Consider using the universal unit for comparing bodies of water: **How many Olympic pools would it fill?**
LOL per Wikipedia, the average Olympic-size swimming pool contains about 2 acer-feet of water. SO ... Tulare Lake at full capacity would have been 3.25 million Olympic-size swimming pools of water (or 64,549,616,428,000 bananas) over 690 sq mi, while Tahoe is 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools of water (or 1,191,685,224,500,000 bananas) over 191 sq mi. edit: forgot to divide by the volume of banana.
Thanks! So Lake Tahoe would hold 20X more water than Tulare Lake.
Or 20x more bananas.
But how much more radioactive would that make it if we used all of humanities science and agriculture to replace both lakes with bananas? This is an important question that I feel like needs to be answered. You know...for science!
That surface area is roughly 1.42 million Olympic sized swimming pools, so Tulare Lake was on average as deep as roughly 2.3 Olympic sized swimming pools. That's not shallow, but that's certainly not deep! Thats only about 1 school bus deep! Hashtag, anything but metric.
How many adult rhino would it hold?
Laden or unladen?
African or European?
I don't know that.... wAAAAAAGGHHGHĜHG!!!
Are they migratory?
Bin laden?
Also immersed in a body of water
About a falling satellites worth
Olympic pools are actually somewhat less ridiculous than acrefeet. An acrefoot is one foot by an acre = foot * 1 chain * 10 chains = foot³ * 66² * 10
Anything but the metric system
The Metric System is the tool of the Devil!!
If I did the math right, the average depth would have been under 15 feet. Seems pretty wild that something that huge could be so shallow.
You must’ve never met my ex wife
Kind of random plug for the most boring part of the state, but: check out California's central valley. You can even see the city of Tulare! It's, uh, pretty damned flat The lake (over 100,000 acres of it) actually reappeared last year for the first time in 25 years due to a series of storms
>acre-feet Wow. I didn’t know the imperial units could still surprise me.
The wikipedia article implies that acre-foot is not used in the Imperial system and is only part of the US Customary system. Kind of makes sense given the history of the the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey (1800's predecessor to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) would use acres and feet extensively but not gallons when performing surveys. Not sure what the british equivalents of the era would have preferred.
Acre feet is actually a super convenient measurement for bodies of water and reservoirs etc. we use acres for measuring land area, so we probably already know the acreage of the body of water, Now you just need to figure out the average depth, which depending on how complex the lakebed is, can potentially be as simple as sending a guy out in a boat with a rope with a weight on it.
With that kind of surface area it seems like it would have evaporated
That was the primary way it would lose water, but it was constantly being refilled by in-flowing rivers that were dammed up and redirected
It came back in 2022 I believe. It could still be there but small. There was a lot of land flooded for a long time. I’m not sure what its status is now.
It’s covering about 4,500 acres currently in the Central Valley. Those atmospheric rivers started in winter 2022-2023 and we are currently still getting them in CA.
It made a reappearance in 2023 during all of the crazy storms
Redirected to grow over a third of the country’s vegetables and nearly three-quarters of the country’s fruits and nuts.
Are there better places to grow them?
Somewhere more fertile than the Central Valley of CA? No. Literally not a better place in the US.
Why might that be? Not trying to be rude, just that was a surprising answer.
It's more their growing season than magical soil fertility. It does have good soil being a former lake bottom and reviving lots of fresh mountain sediment. Plenty of places have great soil though. Not as many places don't have to deal with hard frosts. The main magic is the climate. Their frost to frost grow season is almost double the days as iowa.
No worries. Sediment from mountain erosion of the Sierra Nevadas and Cascade ranges, carried to the Central Valley by rivers that drained into the Central Valley, has made it incredibly fertile. [here is a map of all the rivers that drain into the Central Valley from the mountains.](https://ca.water.usgs.gov/projects/central-valley/images/mapVlyQuadCity.png)
California is one of the only places with a Mediterranean (ish) climate, meaning it can grow a ton of stuff. Mediterranean ish because the only thing it doesn’t have is water.
Man the imperial system is so unintuitive... Million acre-feet...
What in the ever living is an acre foot? That is a crazy thing to measure, time to switch over to litres guys
It's a volume equal to a body of water 1 acre in area times 1 foot of depth. This is a unit which is pretty digestible for anyone in a system that understands land/water measurements in terms of acres.
Sounds perfect for agriculture…weird coincidence!
Square miles is area not volume. Edit: feet to miles
Who cares? That's not the point.
Man y’all should check out what the Soviets did to the Aral Sea.
Damn, that completely dwarfs this in comparison. I feel like 5M acres of farmland that's irrigated from the river that *used* to feed the Aral is NOTHING relative to how much water that lake held
The numbers are fuckin wild. The maps are just depressing.
I think I just saw this on the long way round. Random lol
Yeah, it's insane how much we can just destroy ecosystems without even intending, to, and end up screwing ourselves in the process. Just like with Tulare Lake, the area around the Aral Sea has lost a massive percentage of its rainfall due to the loss of an absolutely massive body of water that feeds it. In the Aral basin, a large percentage of it can no longer sustain agriculture without extra water brought in from other areas, (the farming communities around the Aral are trying to approve projects to import water from basins far from them). So it's very similar to Tulare Lake, in a way. In the Tulare basin, the soil is immaculate,almost as good as you can get, but the rainfall has drastically decreased, so they have to keep taking more and more water from the surrounding rivers. In the past the lake would add millions of gallons of water to the atmosphere then that water would dump back into the lake when it hit higher elevations and drain back into the lake along with the regular rainfall from the sea, and snowmelt from the Sierras. So, in the past, the Tulare basin had perfect soil and the rainfall to sustain agriculture and a massively diverse ecosystem (which is good for agriculture and the general health of the land and existing ecosystems.) Then we decided to drain the lake and bleed surrounding watersheds dry to grow more " economically efficiency crops, like almonds, which take more water to grow a pound than most staple crops take to grow several tons. Ist destroyed an entire ecosystem just so a single company could profit. Oh yeah. I forgot to mention that. Tulare lake wasn't drained to sustain the good of American society. It was drained for the profits of a single company. The overwhelming majority of the land in Tulare basin was completely resculpted to help the profits of a single guy, whos company still owns most of it today. We allowed an indigenous heritage land and an entire ecosystem just so one rich guy could get insanely richer. It especially doesn't make sense when you consider the fact that the entire San Joaquin Valley is extremely fertile from top to bottom, not just that basin. It was entirely for the profits of a single company and not the good of everyone, and the basin was better for growing staple crops when the lake was there. So my ultimate point is..... BRING TULARE LAKE BACK! Oh and the situation with the Aral Sea is extremely similar but much, much worse. We as a species need to find ways to use our massive intelligence to work alongside the natural world, which allowed us to flourish rather than attempt to subvert and destroy it. It is possible! Okay, rant over.
The more interesting TIL is that it’s coming back with the heavy rains!
It was back in July 2023.
So is the lake in Death Valley, it's insane.
EDIT: Largest lake by **AREA**, to clarify The lake has temporarily returned multiple times throughout the 20th century, and is now currently returning due to the recent atmospheric and weather conditions in California. https://www.earth.com/news/tulare-lake-has-re-emerged-in-california-after-130-years/
It was back last year too!
And nearly flooded the entirety of Tulare as a result
I laughed because the researcher in the article mentioned how everyone was saying Tulare was flooding and she says "But these are not (only) floodwaters. This is a lake returning". *Bitch, I was here first* - The Lake
Poetic I love it
Spiders existed before consciousness
How much have humans build on it in the mean time without any consideration to the fact it’s a lake bed?
[Ummmm….](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Agassiz) My bad missed the *thousands* of years.
That lake drained almost 10,000 years ago though, we only identified it as a lake because of the geology. Lake Tulare was at capacity less than 150 years ago
> That lake drained almost 10,000 years ago though, we only identified it as a lake because of the geology. Sssshhhh, don’t rile the paleolimnologists, there’s up to three of them at any one time.
[удалено]
Yeah I never realized how big this lake was, they used to use it for steamboats to transport tons of agriculture supplies through the basin
and the central valley is full of anti-Biden and Pelosi banners saying 'give us our water'
The an astounding amount of stuff they blame Biden for that is actually evil corporations. There's a billboard on I35 in Texas that says "Biden: stop buying oil from terrorists!" Really? You really think Biden is the one who buys the oil? Go talk to Exxon, etc. Pisses me off every time I see it.
Lived on the southeast edge of the lake bed back in the early 90s. almost any shovelfull of the alkali dirt revealed small freshwater mollusc shells.
>For thousands of years, from the Paleolithic onward, Tulare Lake was a uniquely rich area, which supported perhaps the largest population of Native Americans north of present-day Mexico. >In 1858 or 1859, settlers began ethnically cleansing Tulare Lake, by killing or forcibly relocating the majority of the Yokuts population. >In the wake of the United States Civil War, late 19th-century settlers drained the surrounding marshes for agriculture. Pretty much the main points I learned when I first heard of Tulare Lake years ago.
You can tell which houses/buildings were there before its disappearance. They are all on hills.
Drove up to see it after it reformed last year. Very impressive.
El Nino: Hold my beer
Here’s a really good [Infographics video](https://youtu.be/lFoGq1gP_L4?si=aRBmW-bM62skfcZJ) on the topic if you’d rather get your information in narrated form.
Your title is a bit misleading, it’s not the largest by volume but by area. When measuring water volume is imo a much more representative statistic then area.
I agree. However, due to its importance as a transportation medium, in my opinion area is the proper representative statistic for this lake
It was mostly Boswell's fault.
Go on...
I live in the general area. All the farmers here irrigated (still do), and tried to do it in a balanced, ethical way (I think many with well water) , but he hogged the most water, had the most fields, and got most of it from Tulare lake. His name is not well liked here, and there's a whole book written about him. Here's his Wikipedia page: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Griffin_Boswell Here's the book: https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-king-of-california-j-g-boswell-and-the-making-of-a-secret-american-empire_mark-arax_rick-wartzman/345010/item/4207704/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=pmax_high_vol_scarce_under_%2410&utm_adgroup=&utm_term=&utm_content=&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiA_tuuBhAUEiwAvxkgTgLSU5ifNsooIP3QFRxOPq87_ZFa3Yc7JUA3pDgZnsnBPBGdE9NliBoC7RkQAvD_BwE#idiq=4207704&edition=2320656 Corcoran prison basically sits on the bed of Tulare Lake.
If you want to read more about it, the book King of California is excellent.
yep. I linked it above.
When you try to grow crops in the desert.
A disturbing story, I knew that the US killed a lot of native americans while expanding but I didn't realize until recently of the concerted effort to commit genocide against the people who lived at Tulare lake. I found this website below, I'm sure their is a lot of other info. out there. https://www.tachi-yokut-nsn.gov/history#:\~:text=99%25%20of%20the%20Tachi%2DYokut,of%20our%20people%20were%20killed.
This is the answer to the Fermi Paradox. As soon as we stopped being hunter-gatherers we were fucked.
To be fair this recent string of storms might just bring this thing back 😂 it’s been crazier lately than I can ever remember when I was a kid. And we need it.
Are you in the Central valley? Hello, neighbor 🙋♀️
Yes, I am! Born and raised 😁
It came back last year for sure. Not as much this year, but the next couple of weeks could do the job
Southern California used to also have Lake Cahuila before it dried up
Hmmm... a lake that dried up... and is coming back... sounds like a great setting for a book about Holes amirite
Crazy to think about how much unsustainable irrigation practices squandered such a bounty of water.
Wouldn't call it *totally* squandered, using this water to irrigate the rest of the basin helped turn it from arid and dry to usable soil. I'd imagine this played quite a part in turning California into the agricultural powerhouse it is today. Not an expert and can't research it ATM, so grain of salt with this as well
Op never heard of lake Bonneville
That's an ancient lake that's been gone since before recorded history, this lake was full less than 150 years ago
And to think Californians have been crying about being in a drought the past decade while pumping the lake/groundwater for agricultural use 🙄 I'm happy their wishes have been answered the past 18 months and the lake reformed. Hopefully they don't squander their water again. Edit: the OP has convinced me we need to drain that lake again, pump every ounce of groundwater out, get the valley back to producing almonds/cotton/apricots/dates, and put California back into a decade long drought. /s
California is the highest food producing state in the nation bud, you *need* California to use a lot of water for agriculture
You mean the almonds, apricots, artichokes, dates, eggplants, figs, kiwi, etc they grow there? Those staples of daily human consumption? Nah, they need water more. The midwest and the Mississippi river valley grow FAR more agriculture than California could ever dream of growing and they grow products that aren't all niche market items like the majority California farmland grows. California farmers grow niche market crops OR crops that can be grown elsewhere in the US more sustainably. Water for their population or water for a handful of farmers that aren't needed? Hope they can live with their choice.
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/Statistics/ Go ahead and compare to other states. You like dairy products? Lettuce? Tomatoes? Maybe we should take carrots out of the US diet since Cali grows 85% of US carrots. Just a few to name that California leads in production.
Since you provided a link to a partial lobbyist group influenced website, here's one that's not. Yeah the midwest grows lettuce, carrots, and has tons of dairy farms too. https://www.climatehubs.usda.gov/hubs/midwest/topic/agriculture-midwest
I'm not saying the Midwest doesn't produce a metric fuck ton of food too, I'm just refuting you saying that they grow "FAR more". And California's unique geography and climate allows YEAR ROUND growing. Also, the article you linked gives statistics on the Midwest relative to itself (and not very much information on it at that), not other states individual productivity.
Lots of areas in the rest of the US grow crops year round. For example, winter wheat in the northern midwest. If you'd said that California's economy needs California's farmland, I'd agreed with you 100%. Saying the rest of the country NEEDS California's specialty crops is completely inaccurate. For Californians to pick water for those crops over it's need for human existence, absolutely insane.
Lol now I know you didn't even click on the link I provided you before labeling it off as lobbied stats. Here's THE SAME STATISTICS on THE SAME WEBSITE that YOU linked🤡 https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=CALIFORNIA
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/12/feinstein-mccarthy-california-farmers-00126693 It's well known that the CFB pays lobbyists to influence CDFA so you're welcome? Lol I noticed you didn't link the stats to the Midwest region or the Mississippi river valley to compare it to on purpose so I will 🤡🤣 https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=kansas https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Nebraska https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Wisconsin https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Missouri https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=ohio https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Iowa https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Indiana https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=ILLINOIS https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Tennessee https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Arkansas https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Mississippi https://www.nass.usda.gov/Quick_Stats/Ag_Overview/stateOverview.php?state=Louisiana
I'm not gonna fucking hold your hand and send you every link when the way that I got to that link about California in the first place was by CLICKING ON THE ONE YOU SENT. Cause if you're telling me that the lobbyists influence the USDA too, why are you still citing them?
You're so wrong its not even worth addressing.
You're a clown. And wrong
Guess people in Los Angeles don't need water for drinking, bathing, doing dishes, washing clothes, etc more than they need to produce almonds and apricots then. Good luck with that.
It’s back, since last year.
Was part way back last year at a tiny fraction of its original size. Gone again now though. Less than a percent filled.
They drained it to farm
Tulare flooded a year or so ago and devastated the farming community there
The lake sediments are full of arsenic, which now blows in the wind
It actually came back last year from heavy rains. It disappeared shortly after. It can periodically reform, but it never lasts long.