Great California, Nevada, Oregon Flood of 1862

[bell-cot]

> ...At least 4,000 people were estimated to have been killed in the floods in California, which was roughly 1% of the state population at the time...

CA's current population is ~40,000,000. Imagine the reactions to a flood which killed ~400,000 of them.

[vondur]

It was flooding like this which prompted the construction of the Los Angeles riverbed system.

[tanseydavid]

Interesting take-away quote from the article:

"The floods followed a 20-year-long drought."

[npunt]

Water does not absorb into parched dirt nearly as well as wet dirt. It’s a big contributor to flooding when rainfall finally appears, as the water has nowhere to go.

[2devnull]

For an interesting local take on this era:

http://www.sandylydon.com/new-page-16

[olivermarks]

absolutely brutal decade!

The Flood of 1862, The Drought of 1863-1864, Wildfires of 1865, two large earthquakes and a Smallpox epidemic to finish off the decade.

[CodeWriter23]

Does that mean the Industrial Revolution has been causing extreme weather right from the very start?

[aatharuv]

No, it means that there were extreme weather events going on even without the industrial revolution in full swing.

Extreme weather is just going to be far more common https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/weather-climate#:~:te....

The 500 year flood is going to be a 100 year flood and a 100 year flood is going to be a once a decade flood.

[throwaway313313]

From the Wikipedia page: "The storm was not an unprecedented occurrence. Geologic evidence has been found that massive floods, of equal or greater magnitude to the 1861–1862 event, have occurred in California roughly every 100 to 200 years."

[olivermarks]

that's hilarious!