California warning of super storm

California might be struck by winter super storm-A group of more than 100 scientists and experts say in a new report that California faces the danger of a huge "super storm" that could flood a quarter of the state's homes and cause $300 billion to $400 billion in damage. Researchers point out that the potential scale of destruction in this storm scenario is four or five times the amount of damage that could be shaped by a major earthquake.

It sounds like the plot of an apocalyptic action movie, but scientists with the U.S. Geological study warned national and state emergency officials that California's geological history shows such "super storms" have happened in the past, and should be added to the long list of natural disasters to worry about in the Golden State.

The threat of a cataclysmic California storm has been dormant for the past 150 years. Geological Survey director Marcia K. McNutt told the New York Times that a 300-mile stretch of the Central Valley was inundated from 1861-62. The floods were so bad that the state capital had to be moved to San Francisco, and Governor Leland Stanford had to take a rowboat to his own induction, the report notes. Even larger storms happened in past centuries, over the dates 212, 440, 603, 1029, 1418, and 1605, according to geological confirmation.