The link between Utah and floods in the Sacramento Valley (California)

The link is, paraphrasingly slightly, that settlers in Northern California (north east of Sacramento) didn't pay their rent to the Mormon landowners for a sawmill and some land that the Mormons left in haste to return to defend Salt Lake City against Johnson's army in 1857. Orson Hyde sent a scathing letter back to the tenants that said "You shall be visited of the Lord of Hosts with thunder and with earthquakes with floods..." Mark McLaughlin in Today's Sierra Sun finishes the story "His scathing indictment, dated Jan. 27, 1862, was compelling at the time. The Carson, Washoe and Sacramento Valleys were all under deep water; the result of heavy rain melting the mountain snowpack. "