California (PRK) used to get hurricanes, in pre-history. We still get heavy rains from Pineapple Express out of Hawaii, capable of dumping dozens of inches of rain in a few days. Or even sustaining heavy rains for months. I lived through one of those already. Very interesting. Made owning proper raingear useful instead of signs of Geekery. Where was Al Gore in the 1986 Pineapple Express storms? The predicted heavy pineapple express last winter gave 10-15 inches, then stopped.
Every time there's a hurricane in Baja up the Sea of Cortez, we get spinoff thunderstorms into the Mohave desert, Nevada, Arizona, and sometimes up into the rest of California too. These happen in the summertime, and can lead to lightning sparked wildfires, flash floods, roads and bridges being washed out, even deaths. The sudden intensity in places that rarely get water means erosion is really bad there. The alluvial fans and debris flows, a sort of foam mixture of sand, pebbles, boulders, water, and air, can flow enormous distances and their results are visible in every fan below every canyon in the LA basin. This is an ongoing problem. Building houses on those fans is just asking for it. Yet people do, just like other people build on crumbling cliffs obviously eroding away from the waves and then complain when their house falls into the sea. Duh.
So hurricanes can create thunderstorms two thousand miles away that burn down the woods and cause flash floods and drown people and destroy property. Huh. And that's just from hurricanes.
Erosion carried by rivers into reservoirs fills them up, removing their value for flood control, for power generation, and for irrigation of crops. Eventually the filled in dams become meadows of silt with a waterfall where the dam is overtopped by the floods and all the sediment continues downstream, accelerating the rise of river levels behind levies, which raises the chances of flood to inevitable.
Those floods will end up depositing fresh silt all over fertile farmland, ruining it for the short term, since it takes some time to turn silt into soil. Subsequent floods will remove most of that soil fertility so until the floods stop, the soil is going to have problems. Few farmers can afford to deal with that and will bankrupt and either suicide or leave. Losses of crops to the world means millions or even billions will starve to death. But those billions won't pay for levy repairs, nor will they fund the necessary land work to scrape off the topsoil, bring in fill dirt, and replace topsoil well above the eventual flood levels, which will always rise due to ongoing erosion caused by the fact there are mountains around the valley. Too bad. Nature is harsh.
Loss of tax revenue from the largest industry in California, farming, means no funds for social programs or basic maintenance, fire fighting, levy repairs, flood control mosquito abatement. Pretty soon California isn't a fun place to live. Once the delta levies fail, salt from the Bay will reach a carefully isolated pumping station responsible for irrigation water for San Joaquin Valley agriculture and drinking water for San Jose and Los Angeles. The loss of water for both those cities will simultaneously end both High Technology and the Movie Industry in this state. That's the remainder of big business in the state. Gone.
The state could legitimately declare Force Majeur and legally avoid meeting contracts for its employees, suppliers, and people on the many social programs. This would be a disaster for every person who relies on benefits like Welfare etc. The checks would stop, or being meaningless since there's no longer drinking water where those people concentrate (Oakland, South Central Los Angeles). For them, rioting will lead to gunfire, and fleeing the state with what fits in your car the only option for survival. They will curse California as they drive away, assuming there's fuel and they don't find themselves grateful to get into a train boxcar across the desert, pure refugees hoping relatives will take them in. This series of events would happen in about 4 months from the failure of the delta levies and the first high tide to lines of cars leaving the state. Those who wait it out will learn about Malaria and bankruptcy.
Those remaining in California will find their taxes going WAY up to pay for repairs, water supply, govt employees, all the stuff that's broken. It becomes a bad place to be rich, too. I suspect many will leave. California has always been about boom and bust. When the levies fail, it will be all bust.
And that's leaving out volcanic eruptions adding to sedimentation rates. The levies will fail. Nothing we can do will prevent that.
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