A LAKE that dried up 80 years ago looked set yesterday to reappear, as monster rainfall accumulated over California’s wet winter season overwhelms the state’s rivers.

Even as spring appeared in the northern hemisphere, there was no let-up for America’s most populous state, with forecasters predicting another 10cm of rain and up to 120cm of snow over the mountains.

“Another significant event… on top of everything that has come before is going to cause some major problems,” meteorologist Daniel Swain tweeted. 

In California’s Central Valley, authorities issued evacuation orders for residents of communities in Tulare County, where a lake that dried up around World War II was set to reappear.

“Increasingly serious high water prospects in what is shaping up to possibly be a record Kings River runoff season have led the US Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District (USACE) to announce plans to begin a rare flood release into old Tulare Lakebed,” said a statement from the King’s River Conservation District.

“Releases growing to 1,500 cubic feet per second… will begin taking the flood flows to the former lakebed in Kings County. 

“They are anticipated to continue indefinitely, USACE officials said, possibly lasting until sometime in the summer.”

Tulare Lake was once the largest freshwater lake in the western United States, fed chiefly by snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada range. – AFP, March 22, 2023.