There is just no pleasing some people

[vaskidmark]

They are in a drought and pray for rain.

They get rain.

They are upset.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/california-10-bridge-collapse-travel-woes-32560309

The collapse on Interstate 10 in southeastern California Sunday afternoon left one driver injured, stranded numerous motorists and complicated travel for countless thousands for what officials warned could be a long time.

"Interstate 10 is closed completely and indefinitely," said Terri Kasinga, spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation.

The closure will force motorists seeking to use I-10 to travel between California and Arizona to go hundreds of miles out of their way to Interstate 8 to the south or Interstate 40 to the north.

Busy I-10 is the most direct route between the Los Angeles area and Phoenix. An average of more than 20,000 cars per day pass through the area that is shut down, according to federal highway statistics.

20K cars in the Los Angeles area?  That's such a small number as to be barely noticeable.

But it does present the opportunity for more than a few shovel-ready jobs out there in the desert - just watch to see that nobody digs a tunnel under the border.

stay safe.

[K Frame]

That kind of rain does nothing to aleviate a drought.

[Hawkmoon]

Working in an engineering/construction related profession, I am always amused by events in California. California has an attitude that their professional architect and engineering registration requirements need to be different from those of the other 49 states, and their building codes need to be different from those applicable to the other 49 states, because California is "unique." Like -- it never rains in other states, it never snows in other states, no other state has wind, and no other state ever had an earthquake.

Yet ... every time I see a news article about some building sliding from the top of a hill to the bottom, I know even before reading the article that it happened in California. And now we have another example. They built a bridge across a desert wash. Even old Louis Lamour, the prolific writer of pulp fiction cowboy stories, knew that desert washes are the conduits for flash flooding in sudden rain storms in the desert. Drive around the metropolitan Phoenix area and all the washes have big signs warning not to enter the depressions when water is present. Yet California somehow managed to build a bridge across a conduit for flash flooding that wasn't engineered to withstand flash flooding.

Brilliant.

[Hawkmoon]

As usual, the media exaggerate in an attempt to enhance the story.

According to Google Maps, the I-10 route from Los Angeles to Phoenix is 372 miles and takes 5 hours and 10 minutes to drive.

The I-40 route is 491 miles and takes 7 hours and 29 minutes. The I-8 route is 479 miles and takes 7 hours and 21 minutes. So the other routes are longer, and they do take more time. But -- it basically a one-day drive by any of the routes, so not really a game changer. The difference in miles is either 119 or 107, so not really "hundreds" of miles farther.

[charby]

That kind of rain does nothing to aleviate a drought.

Yep

[Tallpine]

I don't see the down side of keeping Californians from going to Arizona 

[SADShooter]

I don't see the down side of keeping Californians from going to Arizona 

Shut it down. Thread's won and done.

[roo_ster]

That kind of rain does nothing to aleviate a drought.

Yep

Disagree.  Too much of an Eastern rainfall paradigm--applied to the Southwest--results in faulty analysis.

Sure, one instance is not likely to do the trick in one shot.  But given how the Southwest is heavily reliant on reservoirs collecting rainfall that occurs mostly during only part of the year rather than regular moderate rainfall, this sort of rainfall is a big help--if it hit the right drainage system.

Such rains can fill up reservoirs PDQ.  Matter of fact, hard, heavy, and short torrential rain is SOP for S California.  IIRC, S California usually has very little rain form the Spring through most of the Fall and relies on some heavy downpours from roughly Thanksgiving to Easter.  This rain, at this time, is out of the ordinary.

Also, it was a few short weeks of several such torrents that brought my own area out of severe drought conditions to full reservoirs.  A single downpour brought many reservoirs up by significant amounts, some by as much as 25% of their total capacity.

[Ben]

Yeah, these rains do help reservoirs a lot, given that they hit near one. They don't call them "isolated" thunderstorms for nothing. :)  I just got back from town, where six miles from the house there was standing water everywhere, while we're dry as a bone here. They also help in the Winter when the cold systems translate to snow and snowpack in the mountains, which is actually the most important factor for CA water. Otherwise, for general soil moisture for crops, etc, then yeah, they don't do much as they quickly saturate the surface, then start running off to non-useful places like the ocean.

I believe the last really nice light and steady rains we had, at least south of SanFran, were in I think Dec of 2010. I remember dove hunting in the rain every day just before Christmas while it came down in mostly heavy drizzle form for nearly a week straight with very few breaks. Lots of good ground saturation.

All signs point to a massive El Nino for this year, bigger than even our '97 storms. The fly in the ointment will be the massive and persistent anomalous high pressure blob (named the "Ridiculously Resilient Ridge) that has been parked off CA during our rainy season for the last couple of years, which has been the major contributor to drought conditions. If the ENSO system is massive enough to break through that, it's going to be a very wet Winter here. If it isn't, then a lot of that rain will push into the South from AZ to FL.

[K Frame]

A large part, if not a majority of California's water does not, and never has, come from rainfall. It comes from snowmelt in the Rockies, and there's been precious little of that to count on for the last several years.

Much of what falls as rain in these fast moving hard hitting storms is either lost through absorption/runoff, which never makes it to a reservoir, or ends up being discharged out to sea through municipal storm water drainage systems.

Reservoirs, especially in California, are either highly localized, or are massive. A full local reservoir is great for you and your neighbors... for the time being. But those massive reservoirs, like Lake Shasta and Lake Meade, aren't being recharged, and are being drawn down at rates far exceeding what is being replentished right now.

You'll also noted that this rain was limited to Southern California, which means that the reservoirs that could benefit possibly benefit from this kind of rain event... didn't.

The heavy rains in Southern California several months ago also did virtually nothing to break the drought.

[Ben]

Mike, all correct except for "Rockies" - that would be a long wait for a train don't come. :)

It's the Sierras for us.

[K Frame]

Yes, Sierra Nevadas... My bad.

[Marnoot]

Well some does come from the Rockies via the Colorado, no?

[KD5NRH]

Otherwise, for general soil moisture for crops, etc, then yeah, they don't do much as they quickly saturate the surface, then start running off to non-useful places like the ocean.

So when is California going to sue the ocean?

[Ben]

Well some does come from the Rockies via the Colorado, no?

Sure, but the really important water (at least right now) is what the Sierras can give us to recharge groundwater (which takes years), and to a lesser extent, the larger Sierra foothill reservoirs.

[charby]

Awesome, I was going to write up a nice long post on hydrology of ground and surface water after work tonight to refute Roo ster's beliefs, but you guys did it little more simply.

Just because the rain filled up your swimming hole, doesn't mean that everyone else got usable water in the neighborhood.

[KD5NRH]

Just because the rain filled up your swimming hole, doesn't mean that everyone else got usable water in the neighborhood.

Just because you gotta strain the used condoms and frogs out and boil it first doesn't mean it's not usable.

After all, they're Californians.  It's not like they bathe.

[charby]

Just because you gotta strain the used condoms and frogs out and boil it first doesn't mean it's not usable.

After all, they're Californians.  It's not like they bathe.

WTF?

[roo_ster]

Awesome, I was going to write up a nice long post on hydrology of ground and surface water after work tonight to refute Roo ster's beliefs, but you guys did it little more simply.

Just because the rain filled up your swimming hole, doesn't mean that everyone else got usable water in the neighborhood.

Well, yes, it was a fine refutation of a parody of what I wrote, assuming all caveats were instead absolutes.

[K Frame]

Well, yes, it was a fine refutation of a parody of what I wrote, assuming all caveats were instead absolutes.

Well, yes, it was a fine refutation of a parody of what I wrote, assuming all caveats were instead absolutes.

Hey, you were right! The entirety of California is now under 30 feet of water from those rains! Drought over! They're saved!

Of course, they all drowned, but that's not such a bad thing.

Check out this to see exactly how screwed the California situation is right now. http://www.californiadrought.org/drought/current-conditions/

The 12 major reservoirs (middle map, top row) are averaging about 38% full, with none of them at 50% or greater capacity.

Torrential rainfalls like those just experienced don't have much impact on groundwater levels, either, because they run off before they can soak in.

The only parody here is the apparent belief that those rains did much, if anything, to help curtail the drought in any fashion.