A lake that dried up eight decades ago is coming back to life. However, it might not be good.
Ghost Lake Returns
One of the wettest times in recent memory in California recently ended. Many of the state's drought-stricken reservoirs have been filled by torrential rain, and some are now overflowing for the first time in 10 years as a result.
Additionally, Tulare Lake in the San Joaquin Valley appears overnight. The lake, though, has been there for a while.
The water that feeds Tulare Lake comes from the Sierra Nevada and uses to be the largest freshwater lake in the Western United States. When the area was redeveloped for agricultural purposes roughly 80 years ago, it dried up, Newsweek reported.
Rivers were redirected elsewhere as a result, and the area was turned into agriculture. As a result, Tulare Lake ceased to exist, and it has been dry ever since.
Tulare Lake used to be the second-largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi before industrialization. According to Keith Musselman, an assistant professor at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder, the water filled groundwater reserves and evaporated in a natural cycle that most likely provided moisture back to its source-the southern Sierra Nevada. This is because the area is landlocked and lacks a natural watercourse to the sea.
The lake was a sizable wetland that housed sizable Native American communities and abundant wildlife. According to geological data, it may have been a relic of a much bigger ancient lake that once covered much of California's Central Valley and alternately drained and filled as earthquakes and erosion changed the state's terrain and river systems.
Locals affectionately refer to it as "ghost lake" since it occasionally resurfaces during exceptionally rainy seasons in the state.
Tulare Lake's Return Is Not Necessarily a Good Thing
Although Tulare Lake's seemingly impending return appeared good news, it's not. The ghost lake could leave whole communities underwater, NPR reported.
According to Kiara Rendon, who looks out on her family's 10-acre plot of land in the small rural community of Allensworth, the first Black settlement in California, the water was coming inside their property. Rendon recounted when her 5-month pregnant sister built a ditch to prevent water from entering their property.
According to Soreah Hok, a team was dispatched to dig a ditch into channeling the water by Cal Fire, a state organization that reacts to natural catastrophes. Rendon never anticipated a flooding problem, but persistent rains since late December have dumped some of the state's biggest Sierra Nevada snowpacks ever recorded.
The melting snow will naturally flow into Tulare Lake's footprint in the Central Valley of California. That rising water is directly in front of Rendon's house.
Rendon said they were the first ones affected by the water. However, if it continues, the others in the communities will experience the same problem.
Fresno writer Mark Arax exclaimed that they often remark that man regained the desert. However, he stressed that they didn't reclaim the desert because they had already claimed it. However, nature is reclaiming the land.
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