Thousands Evacuated in Northern California Ahead of Worst Flooding in More Than 20 Years

Around 4,000 people were ordered to evacuate from a town about 60 miles north of San Francisco Tuesday night, as heavy rain and snow is expected to raise a river to flood levels not seen since 1995, The Sacramento Bee reported.
"Evacuate now if you live near the Russian River," the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office urged, according to AccuWeather.
The Russia River in Guerneville had already reached 32 feet by 6 p.m. Tuesday and is expected to hit 46 feet by Wednesday evening, The Sacramento Bee reported.
"If it gets to 46 feet, it's done. There is no way to prepare for that," the manager of the one-story River Inn Grill Andre Vazquez told The Sacramento Bee. He said the restaurant would be submerged if water levels reached that point.
#RussianRiver at #Guerneville forecast to peak at 46.1 feet late Wednesday evening (major flood). This would be the… https://t.co/2VX3LlKugZ— NWS Bay Area (@NWS Bay Area)1551231911.0
The flooding comes due to a wet, slow weather event called an atmospheric river storm, The Mercury News reported.
"It's pretty serious," Sacramento National Weather Service (NWS) hydrologist Peter Fickenscher told The Mercury News. "We consider this a major flood. There will be numerous impacts. It's a rare event. The rainfall has been very focused and concentrated right through the Russian River basin. It has been non-stop rain for 24 hours and it will continue overnight into Wednesday."
In addition to Guerneville, evacuations had been ordered in Mendocino County in the Ukiah Valley and Hopland areas, where the Russia River was expected to begin flooding low elevations by 7 p.m. Tuesday and reach its highest levels by 1 a.m. Wednesday.
Evacuations were made more difficult by a mudslide on Bohemian Highway near Monte Rio, Accuweather reported.
A man and woman were trapped in the slide but were rescued, according to The Sacramento Bee.
"Well I fell into the mud when the tree fell over the top of me. It happened so fast you don't even know, you know?" survivor Kear Koch told KGO-TV, as The Sacramento Bee reported.
The rain came from a weather system that moved off the Pacific from Hawaii and has caused power outages and taken down trees across the West, adding to a winter that has seen record precipitation in the Western U.S. The city of Santa Rosa received a record 5.66 inches of rain, the most since 1902.
Upon further review, the 5.66" of rain that fell in Santa Rosa today would break the all-time daily precipitation r… https://t.co/UsaWYo1WbG— NWS Bay Area (@NWS Bay Area)1551229995.0
A study released last year found that California could expect more extreme weather due to climate change, with both longer droughts and increased flooding as precipitation falls in heavy bursts.
"I feel like I'm living in a perpetual state of disaster here in California," journalist Kent Porter tweeted Wednesday.
I feel like I'm living in a perpetual state of disaster here in California. Floods are eerie at night, as Guernevil… https://t.co/Q5nH1ber4p— Kent Porter (@Kent Porter)1551248898.0
Evacuations were also ordered in Butte County, according to KRCR News, which was devastated by the Camp Fire last fall.
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- Redwoods are the world's tallest trees.
- Now scientists have discovered they are even bigger than we thought.
- Using laser technology they map the 80-meter giants.
- Trees are a key plank in the fight against climate change.
They are among the largest trees in the world, descendants of forests where dinosaurs roamed.
Pixabay / Simi Luft
<p><span>Until recently, measuring these trees meant scaling their 80 meter high trunks with a tape measure. Now, a team of scientists from University College London and the University of Maryland uses advanced laser scanning, to create 3D maps and calculate the total mass.</span></p><p>The results are striking: suggesting the trees <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">may be as much as 30% larger than earlier measurements suggested.</a> Part of that could be due to the additional trunks the Redwoods can grow as they age, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">a process known as reiteration</a>.</p>New 3D measurements of large redwood trees for biomass and structure. Nature / UCL
<p>Measuring the trees more accurately is important because carbon capture will probably play a key role in the battle against climate change. Forest <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2020/09/carbon-sequestration-natural-forest-regrowth" target="_blank">growth could absorb billions of tons</a> of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.</p><p>"The importance of big trees is widely-recognised in terms of carbon storage, demographics and impact on their surrounding ecosystems," the authors wrote<a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank"> in the journal Nature</a>. "Unfortunately the importance of big trees is in direct proportion to the difficulty of measuring them."</p><p>Redwoods are so long lived because of their ability to <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-73733-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cope with climate change, resist disease and even survive fire damage</a>, the scientists say. Almost a fifth of their volume may be bark, which helps protect them.</p>Carbon Capture Champions
<p><span>Earlier research by scientists at Humboldt University and the University of Washington found that </span><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378112716302584" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Redwood forests store almost 2,600 tonnes of carbon per hectare</a><span>, their bark alone containing more carbon than any other neighboring species.</span></p><p>While the importance of trees in fighting climate change is widely accepted, not all species enjoy the same protection as California's coastal Redwoods. In 2019 the world lost the equivalent of <a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">30 soccer fields of forest cover every minute</a>, due to agricultural expansion, logging and fires, according to The Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF).</p>Pixabay
<p>Although <a href="https://c402277.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/publications/1420/files/original/Deforestation_fronts_-_drivers_and_responses_in_a_changing_world_-_full_report_%281%29.pdf?1610810475" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">the rate of loss is reported to have slowed in recent years</a>, reforesting the world to help stem climate change is a massive task.</p><p><span>That's why the World Economic Forum launched the Trillion Trees Challenge (</span><a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a><span>) and is engaging organizations and individuals across the globe through its </span><a href="https://uplink.weforum.org/uplink/s/uplink-issue/a002o00000vOf09AAC/trillion-trees" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Uplink innovation crowdsourcing platform</a><span> to support the project.</span></p><p>That's backed up by research led by ETH Zurich/Crowther Lab showing there's potential to restore tree coverage across 2.2 billion acres of degraded land.</p><p>"Forests are critical to the health of the planet," according to <a href="https://www.1t.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">1t.org</a>. "They sequester carbon, regulate global temperatures and freshwater flows, recharge groundwater, anchor fertile soil and act as flood barriers."</p><p><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor">Reposted with permission from the </em><span><em data-redactor-tag="em" data-verified="redactor"><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/redwoods-store-more-co2-and-are-more-enormous-than-we-thought/" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>.</em></span></p>EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
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Kentucky is coping with historic flooding after a weekend of record-breaking rainfall, enduring water rescues, evacuations and emergency declarations.
<div id="0f31c" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="4290ab3e7ec4e142f8bce774bab39f03"><blockquote class="twitter-tweet twitter-custom-tweet" data-twitter-tweet-id="1366307788155219969" data-partner="rebelmouse"><div style="margin:1em 0">Just got back from my office... downtown Beattyville Kentucky is not a pretty sight. @KySportsRadio… https://t.co/6nXwyMKtRb</div> — Tom Jones (@Tom Jones)<a href="https://twitter.com/8atticus/statuses/1366307788155219969">1614588136.0</a></blockquote></div>
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