California Storms Bring Back Tulare Lake in Central Valley

A series of storms has caused the resurrection of Tulare Lake, once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi River, in California's Central Valley. The lake's rebirth has become a slow-motion disaster for farmers and residents in Kings County, home to 152,000 residents and a $2 billion agricultural industry. The wider and deeper Tulare Lake gets, the greater the risk that entire harvests will be lost, homes will be submerged, and businesses will go under. The fear now is that record walls of snow in the southern Sierra Nevada will liquefy in the intensifying spring heat into a downhill torrent that will inundate the Central Valley.