The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is testing ways to use improved weather forecasts to manage some of the nation’s largest dams to store more water and prevent floods.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is testing ways to use improved weather forecasts to manage some of the nation’s largest dams to store more water and prevent floods. This new approach could help officials respond to new precipitation patterns brought on by climate change.
Between Christmas and January this year, a parade of nine atmospheric rivers — vast streams of water vapor flowing east from the tropical Pacific — pummeled California. The trillions of gallons of rain poured on the state caused widespread flooding. While the rain topped up some drought-depleted reservoirs and aquifers and filled out snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, much of the water quickly ran off into the sea, flowing off asphalt and farms or released from reservoirs to prevent further flooding.
For Patrick Sing, a water manager with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the deluge was an opportunity to try something that would be dangerous anywhere else in the country.
Read more at Yale Environment 360
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