California Screwed, But Until Apocalypse It's Still Nice

If you've been reading the newspaper lately, you've seen the articles about California going broke. Of course, most Daily Downers readers just get their news here, so you don't have to read the paper (we read it for you), but in case you have read a paper lately there was probably something bad about California in it.

When I was a kid, everybody was afraid of earthquakes and people would say California was going to fall into the ocean someday. When I went to California, I thought it was so beautiful that people just made up these stories to keep guys like me out.

When you go out in California, people say "hello" to you. They do it on the street too. Bunch of freaks, right? But it's pretty cool. Hopefully they will emerge from this new onslaught intact.

Until I see the qualifications of the 100 "scientists" involved I'm going to assume that this is bunk, because everyone knows there is no such thing as global warming, except for that kook Al Gore. But Daily Downers readers can decide for themselves because that's what we're all about here. We give you the power to see right through the news, or you could just accept it at face value. I really don't care, since I'm busy getting ready for the disaster I KNOW is coming (zombies and thinking dogs).

A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that California faces the risk of a massive "superstorm" that could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could be wrought by a major earthquake.

It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey warned federal and state emergency officials that California's geological history shows such "superstorms" have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State.

The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own inauguration, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological evidence.

The risk is gathering momentum now, scientists say, due to rising temperatures in the atmosphere, which has generally made weather patterns more volatile.

The scientists built a model that showed a storm could last for more than 40 days and dump 10 feet of water on the state. The storm would be goaded on by an "atmospheric river" that would move water "at the same rate as 50 Mississippis discharging water into the Gulf of Mexico," according to the AP. Winds could reach 125 miles per hour, and landslides could compound the damage, the report notes.

Such a superstorm is hypothetical but not improbable, climate researchers warn. "We think this event happens once every 100 or 200 years or so, which puts it in the same category as our big San Andreas earthquakes," Geological Survey scientist Lucy Jones said in a press release.

Federal and state emergency management officials convened a conference about emergency preparations for possible superstorms last week.

[Associated Press]