A Close Look at the Deadly California Storms

California was hit by a series of relentless storms from Dec. 27 to Jan. 16 that caused extreme flooding and extensive damage in most of the state, killing at least 22 people. 

These types of storms, known as atmospheric rivers, are not new. In fact, they make an important contribution to the West Coast's water supply, providing, on average, 30% to 50% of its annual precipitation. 

But did climate change make these latest storms more intense and dangerous? That was the question that Staff Writer Catalina Jaramillo set out to answer. For her story, Catalina reviewed the current research and interviewed five climate scientists. 

The climate experts told Catalina that there is a good scientific basis to think that storms, including the type that struck California, are generally becoming more extreme due to climate change. But it’s too soon to know whether climate change had a role in this event, and if so, to what degree.

Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, told Catalina that climate change is not “the singular cause” of the storms. But "climate change thus far has likely increased both the intensity and likelihood of seeing such an intense period of precipitation in California,” he wrote in an email. 

Travis A. O’Brien, assistant professor of earth and atmospheric sciences at Indiana University, Bloomington, told Catalina that "climate model studies of atmospheric rivers and global warming … suggest that atmospheric rivers become ‘stronger’ (more water vapor transport) in a warmer climate and are generally associated with higher precipitation amounts."

But, he said, it is impossible to make a “formal statement” about the effect of climate change on these storms without a detection and attribution study, adding that he expects a detection and attribution study on the California storms to come out in about six months.

For more, read "It’s Too Soon to Attribute the California Storms to Climate Change, Experts Say."

Reader: Why is factcheck.com lying to people? ["No Surge in Athlete Deaths, Contrary to Widespread Anti-Vaccine Claims," Jan. 13.] We have names, pictures, date of death, and the vax status of these athletes with the date they took it. The actual facts are a clear contradiction to almost everything in this BS article. You should be ashamed and rename your site Bullshit.com

FactCheck.org Director Eugene Kiely: You say, “We have names, pictures, date of death, and the vax status of these athletes with the date they took it.” I have no doubt you have the names and dates of death, but where is information on “the vax status of these athletes with the date they took it”? And where is the evidence that the vaccine caused their deaths? 

On two occasions, we’ve looked at such claims, which stem from an anonymous website called Good Sciencing. The first time was in December 2021, when Good Sciencing started to circulate a list of supposedly vaccine-injured athletes. At that time, we reviewed publicly available information for each of the 19 professional athletes on the list who either came from or played in the U.S. We found no proof of a causal relationship in any of the cases between the vaccines and the injuries or deaths. 

In 16 of the 19 cases, Good Sciencing didn’t provide any vaccination status – let alone the dates when these athletes were vaccinated. 

And 13 of the 19 athletes, by the way, were retired from their sport – in some cases for decades, such as Hank Aaron, who died of natural causes, not the vaccine, according to the county medical examiner. 

You are referring to our most recent article on this subject. In that article, which we published three weeks ago, Staff Writer Saranac Hale Spencer reviewed the latest Good Sciencing list and spoke with sports medicine experts who all agreed that there is no “surge” of athletes dying suddenly. 

Sara interviewed:

• Dr. Jonathan Drezner. He is the director of the UW Medicine Center for Sports Cardiology at the University of Washington, editor in chief of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, and a team physician for the Seattle Seahawks, the OL Reign soccer team and the University of Washington Huskies. He told Sara: “There is no uptick in sudden cardiac arrest or death in athletes due to COVID-19 or from COVID vaccinations. This is total misinformation.”
• Dr. Kristen Kucera. She is the director of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which catalogs deaths and injuries for high school and college athletes. She told Sara that the data collected so far for the 2021-2022 school year showed no increase in deaths.
• Dr. Robert Cantu. He is the medical director of the center. He told Sara he’s seen no increase in athlete deaths and called the claims of athletes dying “misinformation.” 
• Dr. Curt Daniels. He is a professor of cardiovascular medicine and director of the sports cardiology program at The Ohio State University College of Medicine. He told Sara: “The statistics don’t bear out that there’s been an increase in events among athletes.” 
• Dr. Barry Maron, the lead author of a 2009 paper that assessed the incidence of sudden death in U.S. athletes who were 39 and younger, questioned the methodology of the goodsciencing.com list. He told Sara: “How do you rebut something like that? It’s like they make up the numbers.”

If you can prove all these experts wrong, then please provide the data. It is our policy to immediately correct any errors as soon as they are brought to our attention. You can request a correction by submitting an email here. 

Wrapping Up

Here's what else we've got for you this week:

• "Biden’s Misleading Unemployment Statistic": At the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ winter meeting, President Joe Biden left the false impression that unemployment declined by more than 16 million people on his watch, when the decline was under 5 million.
• "Damar Hamlin Is Recovering and Has Appeared Publicly, Contrary to Online Claims": Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest Jan. 2 on the football field after being hit in the chest during a tackle. Hamlin was discharged from the hospital on Jan. 11 and has made several public appearances since then. But posts on social media falsely claim Hamlin died. 
• "Democrats Misleadingly Suggest Widespread GOP Support for FairTax Bill Unlikely to Become Law": Few Republican lawmakers have publicly supported the FairTax Act, but that hasn’t stopped Democratic leaders from suggesting that the bill has wide support among congressional Republicans.

• "Magic Johnson no contrajo el VIH por una vacuna, contrariamente a lo que se afirma en internet": Desde que fue diagnosticado en 1991, el jugador de la NBA, Magic Johnson, ha afirmado en repetidas ocasiones que contrajo el VIH por transmisión sexual. Pero una publicación viral en las redes sociales de una activista antivacunas afirma falsamente que Johnson estuvo expuesto al virus por una vacuna contra la hepatitis B. 
• "Publicaciones en redes sociales malinterpretan la investigación de la FDA sobre la seguridad de las vacunas contra el COVID-19": Un estudio de la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos de EE. UU. sobre la seguridad de las vacunas ha sido malinterpretado en internet. El estudio no estableció una asociación entre la vacuna contra el COVID-19 de Pfizer/BioNTech y los coágulos sanguíneos, como algunos aseguran. Y hasta la fecha, otros estudios más amplios no han identificado tal vínculo. 
• "Publicaciones en redes sociales distorsionaron un comunicado de los CDC y la FDA sobre refuerzo bivalente": Agencias sanitarias gubernamentales informaron de un potencial problema de seguridad por accidentes cerebrovasculares en personas mayores de 65 años con una de las vacunas contra el COVID-19, pero las agencias no han encontrado una relación causal y la señal fue identificada por solo uno de varios sistemas de monitoreo. Los activistas antivacunas, sin embargo, han afirmado erróneamente que las agencias han hallado una relación entre la dosis de refuerzo y los derrames cerebrales.