(A purely factual question, in a sense, but mundane enough to belong in MPSIMS without a doubt.)
Sacramento-area people, this question is for you. (Twoflower? Are you reading this?)
In the miles and miles of fields and farmlands all around the Sacramento area, and on up into the Colusa area, are there huge areas that were flooded in the recent rains, that still remain flooded?
There are in my area (a little farther south in the San Joaquin Valley, in the San Joaquin River flood plains area).
It happens that I’ll be doing a bit of aerial sightseeing next week, the plan being to head up into the areas around there. It occurred to me that flying over my area would be interesting, to see a panoramic view of all the flooded fields. I was wondering if there’s something like that in the Sacramento / Colusa / Williams area similarly, since we’re most likely heading up that-a-way.
It might be a good opportunity to transport some spadefoot toads from this area to our local Madronna marsh in Torrance where for some reason they have disappeared.
The Yolo Bypass is completely flooded. Pretty much all of the rice fields are flooded, and pretty much all of the lowlands between Sacramento, Colusa and Williams are rice fields. Probably a bit more to the east of Colusa. Water levels are down some since the mid-February floods, but there’s still plenty of it.
There’s a live webcam at that gliderport in Williams. It looks very wet and no obvious activity there today, but not flooded.
As for recharging the aquifers – what they’ve been saying all along is that they may never get as fully recharged as they once were, because the ground has subsided over the years that they’ve been pumped out. The space lost to that subsidence is mostly gone forever.
What about fields full of wildflowers, either in the flatlands or in the hills to the west around Lake Berryessa and Clear Lake?
I’m guessing that the eastern slopes, out of the forests and not in the flatlands, might be good areas for that.
I just saw an e-mail going around our club mailing list, rhapsodizing about the vast wildflower fields in the California Valley (Carrizo Plains) area, visible for miles around. I’m wondering now if there’s anything like that around Sacramento/Winters/Colusa/ Napa/Lake Counties area.
According to an article in the Bee just the other day, we’re 2-3 weeks away from prime bloom around here. Based on a trip to Amador County last week, the vernal pools in the lowlands are still green; there are definitely poppies out in the lower foothills, but 2-3 weeks before peak seems about right.
And of course, we’re still a long way from recharging the groundwater levels in the San Joaquin Valley.
