Anja Raudabaugh is the CEO of Western United Dairies, a trade organization that represents over 75% of the milk produced in California. In mid-March, a sudden snowmelt flooded the Tulare Lake basin—putting 100,000 cattle and over a dozen dairy farms at risk. During the crisis, Raudabaugh shared eye-popping images of flooding and cattle evacuations on her Twitter feed, and she recently gave us a gripping account of what happened as the lake began to refill. In January and February, beautiful, cold snows brought the snowpack in the southern Sierras down to 1,000–3,000 feet. Then before St. Patricks’ Day, all that low-elevation snowpack melted at once when the region was hit with a large, warm storm. And when all that water came down, the river channels just couldn’t handle it.