Cloudburst near Bakersfield, California

Abstract

A CLOUDBURST is reported to have occurred late in the night of Oct. 1 near Bakersfield, California, and to have caused water to advance like a tidal wave 40 feet high down a narrow cañon, sweeping away fifteen bridges, destroying railways and overturning locomotives, with considerable loss of life. Bakersfield lies within the American counterpart of the northern Sahara and the subtropical deserts of Arabia and Persia. The disaster must have occurred within or very near to an area with a mean annual rainfall of less than ten inches, which makes it appear at first sight the more remarkable. Cloudbursts are, however, regarded by meteorologists as nothing more than extreme examples of ‘instability rainfall’ of the thunder storm type—they are in fact often accompanied by thunder—and their incidence in normally dry regions has therefore nothing very anomalous about it. The disastrous floods at Louth (Lincolnshire) on May 29, 1920, due to an exceptionally severe thunderstorm combined with an unfortunate accidental blockage of the narrow valley down which the water might otherwise have passed with little damage, occurred in one of the driest parts of the British Isles. The extent of the damage is often governed by such accidental circumstances, and it is interesting to note that a fall of rain at Cranwell (Lincolnshire) on July 11 of this year almost exactly equalled the heaviest fall measured in and around Louth on May 29, 1920, and came in a shorter time, without disaster.