A giant lake vanished for 130 years, then returned and flooded 120,000 acres overnight
A massive lake in California, Tulare Lake, vanished over a century ago. Recent extreme storms brought it back, submerging farmland. This event underscores how climate change overwhelms existing water systems. Indigenous tribes, who knew the lake...
A road disappears beneath the rising waters of Tulare Lake in Helm Corner, California, on 18 May 2023, as the ghost lake continues to reclaim its ancient basin. Image Credits: Caroline Brehman/EPA
Imagine a lake, the size of a small sea, one that once spread over hundreds of square miles of California’s heartland, just disappearing off the map. Not slowly. Not quietly. But drained and buried under farmland for decades. That is the story of Tulare Lake. And then, in 2023, after more than 130 years, it was back.
America's forgotten lake Tulare Lake in California's San Joaquin Valley was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. Each winter, the basin filled with rain and snowmelt from the nearby Sierra Nevada. By 1920, the rivers feeding the lake were dammed and diverted for irrigation and the lakebed turned into farms.
The land became one of the country’s most productive agricultural areas, growing cotton, tomatoes, pistachios and almonds. For most Americans, the lake was simply lost. It wasn’t even on contemporary maps. The locals called it the "ghost lake."
The ghost lake awakens: Tulare Lake fills its historic basin in April 2023 after more than a century underground. Image Credits: Vivian UnderhillHow a string of monster storms woke it up The winter season of 2022-23 was unlike anything California has experienced in generations. Three years of drought were broken by powerful atmospheric rivers that deluged California from December 2022 to January 2023, restoring reservoirs to historic levels and causing destructive flooding.
The Sierra Nevada snowpack grew to unprecedented levels. As it began to melt, there was nowhere for the water to go. The canals and dams built for a drier time were overwhelmed and the water ran with gravity back into the ancient basin. Heavy rainfall and snowfall in the first three months of 2023 recharged the lakebed of Tulare, drowning farm fields close to the city of Corcoran and smaller towns around it, as reported by NASA’s Earth Observatory.
The price to mankind was heavy. Houses flooded. Roads closed. Generations-old family farms were underwater. Scientists warned Tulare Lake could cause billions of dollars in economic damage and force thousands of farmers off the land, with the water potentially staying for as long as two years.
ADVERTISEMENT
What it means for the future of California's water This was not a random disaster. It was a preview. When atmospheric rivers arrive in rapid succession, they cause three to four times more economic damage than individual atmospheric rivers, according to a study from Stanford University published in Science Advances, because they soak ground already saturated with water and compound the risks of flooding. Climate scientists say they expect to see more of these kinds of back-to-back storms.
From dry land to ghost lake: NASA satellite imagery tracks the rapid inundation of the Tulare Lake basin near Corcoran, California, across March and April 2023. Image Credits: NASACalifornia has a history of swinging between extremes: bone-dry droughts followed by catastrophic wet years. Much of the state’s water infrastructure was constructed for a less volatile climate. The reappearance of Tulare Lake is one such event, illustrating how quickly that infrastructure can be overwhelmed.
"Pa'ashi has reawakened" The Tachi Yokut knew the lake as Pa'ashi, or “big water.” It was an anchor of tribal life, of spiritual belief. The Tachis, the largest of the Yokut bands, inhabited the area closest to the lake, and they relied on the lake for food, shelter materials and as the hub of a regional trade network. But the lake dried up when water was diverted in the early 1900s and the tribe was forced from its land.
When the lake reemerged in 2023, tribal members gathered on the shoreline to hold ceremonies honoring the water and their ancestors. “Pa'ashi has reawakened,” tribal vice chairman Robert Jeff said simply, standing at the water’s edge. Members of the tribe tossed in seeds of native river sage and waded in to replant tule reeds that once defined the landscape.
ADVERTISEMENT
Men and a dog camp along the shores of Tulare Lake in this rare surviving photograph, now housed at the Sarah A. Mooney Memorial Museum in Lemoore, CA. Image Credits: Wikimedia CommonsA lake that shall not stay buried The return of Tulare Lake is a story of climate, agriculture, Indigenous history, and the limits of engineering, all at once. What happens, it asks, when the landscapes we have created to serve our needs begin to push back? It’s a question confronting Americans across the West more and more often.
The ghost lake was not dead for long. And with climate patterns shifting, this probably won’t be the last time it happens.
