You may have heard that California got so much rain recently that skiing will be possible in Tahoe until August and that the lower elevations are starting to look like a bayou in Louisiana. One levee in the farming community of Tulare Lake Basin in the San Joaquin Valley shows how systems that were made to handle a predictable amount of rain need to be fixed. Long-drained The problem with Tulare Lake is that it likes to come back after it rains a lot, which could be better for the complicated water-delivery systems that water the farms. Yesterday, when a levee broke, farmers in the area came up with a quick and brilliant fix: they drove a few trucks into the hole. One of the first questions this idea brings up is whether or not two of the least-liked half-ton trucks in the neighbourhood would be heavy enough to stop raging floodwaters. So that didn’t happen. The people in charge of building the dam filled the beds of a Chevrolet Silverado and a Ford F-150 with more dirt than the trucks could carry. This was a minor insult compared to what happened next. In this video that farmer Cannon Michael posted on Twitter, we can see that the F-150 is already buried in the levee gap. Its bed and roof are covered in what looks like dense soil. How did they do that? The Silverado reveals their method by taking a quick dip with the Ford. These guys have used a different (and surprisingly effective) plan: they put something heavy on the accelerator, put the truck in gear, and then stood back as it sank into the water. As the car entered the water, less careful people might have tried to do a stuntman drop-and-roll out the driver’s side door. This plan is a little less risky because the Chevy has a short column shifter, but our muddy hero still needs to move quickly once the LS V-8 shifts into drive. As he does this, he takes a step back to watch the Silverado drop into the levee and crash into the F-150, stopping the floodwaters from getting to the orchard on the other side. At least the guys in the video seem happy with how things turned out. They might have taken a slightly different path if they had more time and better tools. During the floods of 1969, the Los Angeles Times reported that crushed cars were used to strengthen the levees around Tulare Lake. But, likely, they didn’t get there on their own. We can all agree that that is what led to this new idea. Everything went as planned, and the dam made of trucks worked. But in a few months, you should do a more thorough pre-purchase inspection if you see a cheap blue Silverado or an extended-cab F-150 4×4 for sale in the San Joaquin Valley.
