Big weather events long before climate change

For those wondering about the recent heavy rains, here’s some data. The Chico State University Farm is the official station of record, recording 4.41 inches of rain on Sunday, earning fourth in the alltime record. Chico’s heaviest rain occurred on January 3, 1916 with 5.73 inches in a single day.

While Chico didn’t have a weather station back then, the highest rainfall ever likely occurred in January 1862, during the “Great Flood”. This was an atmospheric river event like we experienced Sunday, but lasted several days, dumping 24.63 inches of rain in San Francisco, 66 inches in Los Angeles, leaving downtown Sacramento underwater.

December 20 1955, had huge amounts of rain in a 24-hour period, with Shasta County recording a record 15.34 inches in just one day. On December 23, 1955, the Russian River reached a crest of 49.7 feet in Guerneville, the highest ever recorded there, and a broken levee along the Feather River on Christmas Eve flooded Yuba City, drowning 37 people.

The American River Watershed Project noted: Native Americans who’d lived for centuries in the region “knew the Sacramento Valley as an inland sea when the rains came,” and their “storytellers told of water filling the valley from the Coast Range to the Sierra.”

This all occurred well before “climate change” started being blamed for every weather event. Imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth from woke media and keyboard warriors if those events occurred today.

References: https://wattsupwiththat.com/newspaper-letter-references/

— Anthony Watts, Chico