Atmospheric Rivers Returned California's Lost Lake—'It Wants To Remain'

A photo shows the flood waters that recently refilled Tulare Lake, August 30, 2023 outside of Corcoran, California. The lake’s re-emergence had several implications for the area.

In a usually dry and arid area of California, there is now a gigantic 100-mile-long lake.

This is Tulare Lake, the “ghost lake” that reemerged last year in the San Joaquin Valley as a result of a series of atmospheric rivers that released an onslaught of rain onto the state.

The lake used to be the largest freshwater lake in the Western U.S., fed by water flowing down from the Sierra Nevada. But when the land was redeveloped for agricultural purposes around 80 years ago, it began to dry up. The rivers that fed the lake were then diverted elsewhere and it became farmland. So Tulare Lake was no more, and it has been sitting dry ever since.

The San Joaquin Valley sees a little over 10 inches of rain every year, the National Weather Service reports. But last year the record amount of precipitation unleashed onto the state meant that it all had to go somewhere—and so marked the lake’s great return.

New research from Northeastern University details the effects of the reemergence of this lake. Vivian Underhill, a former postdoctoral research fellow at Northeastern University at the Social Science and Environmental Health Research Institute said in a summary of the study, that the return of the lake, however, is “complex and layered.”

“At a certain point, I think it would behoove the state of California to realize that Tulare Lake wants to remain,” Underhill said. “And in fact, there’s a lot of economic benefit that could be gained from letting it remain.”

While it has been hugely beneficial for native wildlife, the land it sits on is used for agricultural purposes, meaning the flooding has been problematic for farmers.

Before the lake disappeared, it used to be home to all sorts of wetland birds. And now, not even a year after its return, a range of species including pelicans, hawks, and waterbirds are returning.

“Something that continues to amaze me is—[the birds] know how to find the lake again. It’s like they’re always looking for it,” Underhill said in a summary.

Underhill said that the loss of this habitat, which was once an important area for migratory birds to stop, “has been a major issue in bird conservation and bird diversity.”

There has even been sight of highly vulnerable species, such as burrowing owls. Not just this, but the lake is abundant with fish and amphibians. The study reports that they likely made their way here down from rainfall and flooding.

However, farmers in the area have been negatively affected by the lake’s return.

“Over the last five decades or so, [the farmers] have built a complicated system of flood prevention,” Underhill said.

Although some of the land was protected as Tulare returned, a lot of it was lost to the water.

Some of these farmers have not just lost their land for agriculture, but the entirety of their homes.

“Most of the news coverage about this time talked about it as catastrophic flooding,” Underhill said. “And I don’t want to disregard the personal and property losses that people experienced, but what was not talked about so much is that it wasn’t only an experience of loss, it was also an experience of resurgence.”

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