We may be in midst of life-changing storms

That was the lead on a Half Moon Bay Review story detailing the effects of the Jan. 4, 1982, storm that soaked the Bay Area and killed 22 people in Santa Cruz County, most due to mudslides. The Review pages that week detailed road closures, the sinking of several boats at Pillar Point Harbor and how an angry mob descended on the City Council to complain about drainage and street flooding. La Honda-Pescadero Unified schools closed for a week as a result of flooding.

In Pacifica, things were worse. Much worse. Michelle, Billy and Melissa Velez, ages 4 to 13, were buried in their Oddstad Boulevard home when a mudslide knocked their home off its foundation.

There is a cycle to human events. Time chases its tail. It does not move steadily in a linear fashion. The only difference between events 41 years ago and those today is that we are beginning to pay for generations of degradation to the environment. We may not know for certain whether man-made climate change is responsible for a whirling storm in the Pacific Ocean that looks more like a tropical hurricane than the slow, steady storms that have traditionally brought life to California. But we do know a century of bad habits is changing the climate in unpredictable and frightening ways.

A decade ago, the U.S. Geologic Survey issued a paper outlining something it called an ARkStorm. The AR stands for atmospheric river, something we have come to know all too well. The federal government recognized the potential for these “megastorms” that would pound California for weeks. They were deemed “1-in-1,000-year” events and much more likely than that might seem.

An alphabet’s soup of government agencies — including the USGS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — joined with academics to tease out what such a storm would bring. “The ARkStorm draws heat and moisture from the tropical Pacific, forming a series of (atmospheric rivers) that approach the ferocity of hurricanes and then slam into the U.S. West Coast over several weeks,” according to a summary.

Sound familiar?

The consensus was not encouraging, to say the least. The document calls megastorms “California’s other big one” in reference to our famed earthquake risk. It envisions massive flooding in the Bay Area, suggesting that 25 percent of the buildings across the entire state would suffer flood damage. It projects costs of about $750 billion, stating the economic waves would be felt across the country. It suggests 1.5 million people would have to be evacuated and that there would still be “substantial loss of life.” Oh, and it calls such megastorms inevitable. In fact, there are six such catastrophic megastorms in the last 1,800 years in the state’s geographic record, according to the USGS.

Sure, we might put aside a case of water and download an emergency warning app, but, by and large, Californians count on local, state and federal government to plan for such events. That requires politicians willing to spend money with a long view. That bucks human nature. This week we learned most regional governments only plan for 1-in-50-year storms. And we’ve had one of those in each of the last two years.

AR may stand for atmospheric river, but ARkStorm puts us in mind of something more biblical. Let’s hope that in the weeks ahead we aren’t rounding up animals, two by two.

— Clay Lambert