California zombie lake turned farmland to water. A year later, is it gone for good?

Floodwaters rise in Tulare Lake basin, engulfing a road in Helm Corner, California, on 18 May 2023. Photograph: Caroline Brehman/EPA

For a time last year, it was difficult to drive through a large swath of central California without running into the new shoreline of a long dormant lake.

Resurrected for the first time in decades by an epic deluge of winter rain and snow, by spring the lake covered more than 100,000 acres, stretching over cotton, tomato and pistachio fields and miles of roads.