The flooded disaster that is Tulare Lake in California’s Central Valley

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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I’m blaming Pleonast for that one :laughing:.

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I blame the Romans for imposing their crazily similar words on my Germanic ancestors.

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I blame autocarrot.

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That’ll work!

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I blame Bugs Bunny.

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We can always blame Bugs.

A mild bump here because I drove to LA again for the weekend. Yesterday on the way home we (wife and I) swung by Tulare Lake to check it out. It’s about 5 miles east of I-5 when coming from LA, at the Utica Ave exit if you’re familiar with that area. From I-5 you go east on Utica Ave for 5 miles and then north for 10 miles to get to the water’s edge. On a 350 mile drive it’s not too far out of the way.

I’m still organizing my notes and pictures but for now the overall impression is that the lake has peaked in size. In doing a search now, that seems to be the case:

I have a subscription. Hopefully this is a gift link that gets you passed the paywall. Please let me know:

SF Chronicle — 6/07/2023 California’s once-dead Tulare Lake may be at peak size. Here’s how big it is
.
The revived Lake Tulare, which once had dried up, may have reached its peak size

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Nope, no gifts.

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Worked for me; though I don’t know whether it worked as a gift link, or whether maybe I was just within their free-article limit, if they have one.

Both links appear to be to the same article.

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Okay thanks.

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In May, two guys wanted to see if they could paddle a kayak from the flooded Tulare lake to the San Francisco Bay. They thought it would be an adventure, and a trip of a lifetime. It was 215 miles and took them 10 days.

They got more adventure than they bargained for.

Hopefully this gift link works; I’m using the app now (unlike yesterday):

Shot at, electrocuted, exhausted, exhilarated: What it’s like to kayak from Tulare Lake to San Francisco Bay
https://www.sfchronicle.com/outdoors/article/tulare-lake-kayak-18133683.php

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Link worked for me - IIRC in Wisconsin, you are not trespassing if you are on the water (maybe exception for lakes with no public access) . Now they may have trespassed to get on the lake, but once on the water they are OK (now when camping, they may have trespassed, though the article does mention they did camp on public land) (California law may differ)

Brian
https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Waterways/about_us/whyRegulate.html

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Looks exciting. Unfortunately, it’s paywalled. :frowning:

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Worked for me – until I turned on java (I’m running a selective java blocker.) Then all I could see was sign in or sign up boxes. I turned java off and was then able to read most of the article; there were a couple of floating blank boxes covering part of it.ETA: It wasn’t quite as exciting as that description – nobody was shooting at them, just someone target shooting who couldn’t see them and had no reason to expect anyone there; and one of them grabbed a charged pasture fence by accident. Still a good article, though.

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I was able to read it in incognito mode. That said, the real article will be in an upcoming issue of Outside. Wasn’t a lot a detail in the story posted today. It seemed more like a teaser trailer for the real thing.

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I tried opening it with New InPrivate Window when it wouldn’t open directly.

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Cool story - look forward to the long version. This would be the makings for an interesting outdoor film.

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Didn’t have any problem reading it in my case. Guess YMMV

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Bumped. My brother in LA wanted directions to Tulare Lake. I’ll share them here.

The ▲ symbols are decimal lat/long. Just paste the numbers into the map.

From Los Angeles and heading north on I-5, the quickest visit (but still good, you’ll see a lot of Tulare Lake) would be this.

  1. Come in from the I-5 exit for Utica Ave ▲ 35.93461, -119.91000
  2. Go east on Utica Ave approx 5 miles to 20½th Ave: ▲ 35.93397, -119.82550
  3. Go north on 20½th Ave approx 7¾ miles. You’ll be on a dirt levee road. This takes you to the SW corner: Tulare Lake SW ▲ 36.05031, -119.82569
  4. Continue north on the levee road for 6 miles along the west side of Tulare Lake, to the NW corner: Tulare Lake NW ▲ 36.13752, -119.82493
  5. To exit, continue north approx 2 miles to Madison Ave ▲ 36.16730, -119.82499
  6. To exit, turn west and go 1 mile to hwy CA-41, then go southwest approx 13 miles to Kettleman City. Continue north on I-5.

I visited in April 2023 and June 2023 so it’s been a while and Tulare Lake may have shrunk considerably.

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The San Francisco Chronicle reports that Tulare Lake is essentially gone.

The ‘phantom’ lake that engulfed California’s Central Valley is gone. But the toll lingers

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For now.