The risk of catastrophic flooding in the Tulare Lake Basin has diminished as cool temperatures have predominated this spring, flattening the melt curve of the Sierra’s epic snowpack, state officials said Monday.
We are “not forecasting nearly as severe of damage as perhaps we were looking at several weeks ago,” Brian Ferguson, deputy director of crisis communications for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, said at a news conference Monday. “However, we want to strongly emphasize that we are not out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination.”
Just a few weeks ago, officials worried that floodwaters from the melting Sierra Nevada snowpack would surge down the Tule, Kings, Kaweah and Kern rivers and topple berms, breach levees and inundate towns such as Corcoran and Stratford.
