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The San Joaquin Valley wasn’t all the time so dry. Again within the early 1800s, the area featured the biggest physique of freshwater this aspect of the Mississippi River: Tulare Lake.
Tulare Lake was massive, overlaying 690 sq. miles throughout notably wet seasons. Steamships might carry provides between cities like Bakersfield, Fresno, and San Francisco. If the lake have been to exist completely immediately, specialists declare it will maintain 6.5 million acre-feet of water. That’s a whole lot of H20!
As a consequence of aggressive irrigation practices in the course of the late nineteenth century — together with damming, diverting, and canal digging — Tulare Lake dried up greater than 100 years in the past. As soon as the water was gone, the lake flooring was became farmland. Tulare Lake is now referred to as a “ghost lake,” reappearing in periods of intense rainfall or snowmelt earlier than fading away as soon as once more.
Final 12 months, Tulare Lake got here again in a giant manner. The extraordinary precipitation of early 2023 — together with atmospheric rivers, rainstorms, and runoff from the Sierras — resulted in 114,000 acres of water returning to the previous lakebed. Though this water helped replenish native groundwater provides, Tulare Lake’s reappearance was solely momentary. By February 1, 2024, lower than 5,000 acres of farmland have been below water. By April, the lake had vanished as soon as once more.
As California continues to expertise the consequences of local weather change, there’s probability Tulare Lake will refill itself — briefly, in fact. For growers preferring their water sources to be way more reliable, there’s a greater choice: the Irrigation Division at FGS. Like Tulare Lake, we’ve develop into a giant a part of San Joaquin’s agricultural historical past, with greater than 100 years of expertise within the Golden State. In contrast to Tulare Lake, we’re not going anyplace — and we’ll even come to you, growing and putting in an irrigation system that’s custom-designed to your wants. Season after season, we’ll be there for you.
Don’t be a ghost. Contact us immediately.
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