It is a moment of climate extremes in California. While the state still grapples with a shrinking Colorado River from megadrought, more snowpack accumulated on the Sierra Nevada this winter than is currently stored in one of the river’s main tributaries, Lake Mead. It was a winter season many have called unpredictable and unprecedented, resulting in a series of deadly floods and the reemergence of two infamous ghost lakes — Tulare and Owens.

In this episode, Ten Across founder Duke Reiter sits down with Jeffrey Mount, a geomorphologist and emeritus professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Davis. Together, they will try to unpack the sordid and unique history of water management in the Golden State, including how certain engineering decisions or lack thereof have created such dramatic flood control failures as were seen this spring.