Q & A: What California’s winter storms mean for future – UCSC professor weighs in
For three weeks after Christmas, California was pounded with a series of nine atmospheric river storms. The drenching rains replenished reservoirs that had been seriously depleted during three years of severe drought. But they also caused flooding from the Central Valley to Santa Barbara, triggering mudslides, sinkholes and power outages, and left 22 people dead. Along the coast, big waves ripped a 40-foot hole in the Capitola Wharf, destroyed facilities at Seacliff Beach State Park, flooded homes, wrecked businesses and caused millions of dollars in erosion. For the past 55 years, Gary Griggs, a Distinguished Professor of Earth Sciences at UC Santa Cruz, has studied big storms, sea level rise and California’s changing coastline. UCSC’s longest-serving professor, he is one of the nation’s experts in the ways oceans reshape the land.