After years of severe drought, California is now dealing with a new problem: widespread flooding and environmental dangers caused by a winter of heavy snow and rain that has never been seen before. California’s ecosystems have been greatly affected by this heavy rain, and the effects are not always predicted. One amazing effect of this weather event is that a huge lake in the San Joaquin Valley that had dried up almost 100 years ago has come back to life. This valley, which is between Los Angeles and San Francisco, is famous for the nuts, pistachios, milk, and fruit that it grows.

Today, the area around the farmland in the San Joaquin Valley is mostly desert. Back in the day, though, this area was a thriving and varied habitat, full of trees, wetlands, and a huge lake that made the ground perfect for farming. It was less than fifty years before this lake, which was about the same size as Utah’s Great Salt Lake, dried up. There are still a lot of questions about why such a large amount of water was drained so quickly.