[masraum]

Originally Posted by pwd72s

What I'm seeing is lots of water for California "drought stricken" reservoirs.

Yep, the rains were good, but I assume the snow is even better as it is more like a "time release" formula. From what I've heard, Cali is still so far down, that this won't replenish them back to normal levels.

Subsidence is a big deal in Cali. That's from pumping water out of the ground. I assume it takes a lot of rain/melt a long time to replenish aquifers, and if the water comes hard and fast, I assume a lot or most of it runs out into the ocean instead of soaking in like Cali needs.

I added the bolding. Crazy stuff.

Some of the greatest subsidence in the state occurred in the Long Beach area during the 1940s and 1950s as the result of oil production. By 1951, the rate of subsidence exceeded two feet per year and total subsidence reached as much as 29 feet in the center of the subsidence bowl. In the 1950s, the city of Long Beach determined that water injection would repressure the oil formations and stop the surface subsidence.

Half of all of the subsidence that has occurred in the United States has occurred in California.

The most severely affected areas were in southern and western portions of the San Joaquin Valley as irrigated agriculture expanded. Between 1925 and 1977, land near Mendota sank by nearly 30 feet. By the 1950s a broad area down the west side of the valley to Kettleman City in Kings County sank by up to 25 feet, and on the eastern side of the valley, Tulare and Wasco area farms sank 12 feet. At the extreme southern end of the valley, the ground sank 8 feet. Even in the wetter Sacramento Valley, in the Zamora and Knights Landing areas of Yolo County, the land sank by 4 to 6 feet. Portions of the Antelope Valley near Lancaster, northeast of Los Angeles, have sunk by 6 to 8 feet from 1930, according to USGS.