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Atmospheric Rivers (AR) are narrow bands of water vapor transport, responsible for 90% of mid-latitude water transportation as well as intense and prolonged precipitation events. In the late 1861-1862 an AR event produced flooding that caused a magnitude of economic impacts. We hypothesize that precipitation from these events produces a change in the response of both high-altitude temperature sensitive trees and low-altitude precipitation sensitive trees and that these responses can be used to quantify this event. We created normalized growth indexes for each individual tree ring record and correlated the growth with factors such as altitude and species to quantify the growth. Analysis of the mapped tree growth response is used to extract a coherent signal that may be representative of AR events in general. This signal could then be used to determine if similar extreme AR events occur in earlier portions of the tree ring record. Analysis of this dataset will allow us to better understand, monitor and predict the impact of large AR events on California. The frequency and strength of AR events impacts the length of droughts, intensity of floods, ecosystem response and ultimately impacts on humans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]