LOCAL PENS BOOK ABOUT

Pets

Lake Tahoe author Cal Orey has released “Soulmates With Paws, a Collection of Tales and Tails.” Written from the perspective of an animal writer and gifted storyteller, this one-of-a-kind book highlights the power of love and

Summer Writing Workshops Announced

For more than 50 summers, Community of Writers has brought together poets and prose writers for separate weeks of workshops in Olympic Valley. This summer the Poetry Workshops will be from June 19 to 25 and the Writers Workshops will be from July 10 to 17. The application deadline for both is on March 28. Financial aid is available. | communityofwriters.org

Lake Tahoe Community College, South Lake Tahoe, Jan. 26, 5-7 p.m., ltcc.edu

Meet the Artist: Rolinda Stotts

Marcus Ashley Fine Art Gallery, S. Lake Tahoe, Jan. 27-28, noon to 5 p.m., marcusashley.com

Needlefelting Classes

Tahoe Art League, South Lake Tahoe, Jan. 28-28, (530) 544-2313, talart.org

Paint ‘N’ Sip FUNdraiser

Lake Tahoe Paint & Sip, South Lake Tahoe, Feb. 8, 6 p.m., (650) 814-9565, sugarpinefoundation.org

“Wildland” exhibit

Lake Tahoe Community College, South Lake Tahoe, through March, ltcc.edu

“Passed Recollection” exhibit

Lake Tahoe Community College, South Lake Tahoe, through March, ltcc.edu

An ARkStorm (1,000-year weather event) swamped the Pacific Coast with historic amounts of rain and snow during the winter of 1861-62.

Potent and relentless, a 43-day atmospheric river triggered devastating floods up and down California, inundating the immense Central Valley with an inland sea nearly 300 miles long and 20 miles wide. San Francisco was lashed by more than 24 inches of rain in January 1862 alone. Locations throughout the foothills were deluged by up to 9 feet of rain in just 60 days.

Arid and less populated, Southern California also suffered. In Los Angeles an estimated 66 inches of rain fell that year, compared to an average of 15, which caused mass destruction.

State newspapers reported that dozens of communities were destroyed and thousands of people died, many swept away by deep torrents of muddy water. An estimated 200,000 cattle drowned, nearly one quarter of the Golden State’s total livestock. It took six months for flood waters to recede from the city of Sacramento. When legislators finally returned to the state capitol that summer, they faced a crushed economy and a bankrupt government.

The megafloods that devastated the state, especially in northern California, were exacerbated by post-Gold Rush activities, land development and steep population growth along volatile waterways. In the 1850s, settlers and local officials ignored physical evidence that the strikingly flat Sacramento Valley was essentially a vast hydrological escape valve for the flood-prone Sacramento River. The vast flood plain had previously been submerged by deep water.

The valley was also a catch basin for engorged streams and rivers cascading down out of the immense watersheds of the Sierra Nevada. Millions of tons of fractured rock, cobbles and gravels from hydraulic gold-mining debris filled these streams and choked riverbeds causing them to quickly overflow their