Hahamongna Nursery | Arroyo Seco Foundation

The Winter of 1983

The Winter of 1998

The Winter of 2005

The Winter of 2016

Don't be fooled by the log scale. Check the numbers on the left.

Compare the 2015-2016 Rain Season with Previous El Niño Years

The stream flow gauge in the Arroyo Seco is the most credible witness of the actual wetness or dryness in our region each year. For more than 100 years, it has faithfully recorded the flow in the Arroyo Seco stream resulting from the rainy season. It provides a fascinating study of just how miserably wrong some "scientists" and flood control toadies were this year. Remember all the predictions of horrendous storms with catalystic consequences that local media was saturated with last Fall? Let's look at the record.

These charts display the actual stream flow in the Arroyo Seco for the most characteristic El Niño years in recent decades and provide a comparison with this year's flow. The charts use a logarithmic scale that depicts exponential changes as the magnitude of the peak flows increase.

Note that most El Niño years -- 1983, 1998, 2005 -- were characterised by strong flows through the winter, generally hovering around 100 cubic feet per second (cfs) and reaching up to 2,000 cfs of flow.

This winter the flow in the Arroyo was usually about 10 cfs and never got beyond 50 cfs.

For purposes of reference, the 100 year average flow in the Arroyo has been 10 cfs, and the historic high flows came in 1938 and 1969 with an amazing 8,500 cfs.