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97961
From: ryan, [DNS_Address]
Subject: cali reservoirs full or near full...
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The poster child of California's drought makes a comeback in a near-miracle By Amy Graff April 12, 2024 A wide shot of Shasta Lake with Mount Shasta in the background on April 11, 2024. Photo Courtesy by U.S. Bureau of Reclamation California’s past two wet winters have given the state’s water supply a remarkable boost and stamped out the drought. A snowpack that had been below normal for two years was epic last year and this year. Rivers that were running low are now rushing. Reservoirs that were depleted in dry years are at last brimming with water. Perhaps one of the best examples of this remarkable turn of events is Shasta Lake. Three years ago, the lake was almost 185 feet from being full, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The lake served as a poster child for the state’s drought, with boat docks sitting on exposed, cracked lake bed. The severe drought that fall led to the second-lowest level for Shasta Lake since the dam was built in 1945, according to Michael Burke, a spokesperson for the bureau, which manages the reservoir with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. (The historic low, reached in summer 1977, was 230.32 feet below full.) Fast-forward to spring 2024, after two wet winters marked by headline-making atmospheric rivers, and the lake is 7.39 feet from being full. Since the start of the rainy season in October, Shasta Lake — a behemoth of a reservoir — has jumped up 38 feet, and it’s still rising, according to government data. “We anticipate the lake level to continue to slowly increase until we hit about 5 feet to full in the first two weeks of May,” Burke said. Rises of reservoirs have been common in the last two years with repeat storms dumping snow and rain over California in winter, but for Shasta it’s especially remarkable because the amount of water required to fill the lake is much more than for other reservoirs. Shasta can hold up to 4.5 million acre-feet of water; you could put four Folsom Lakes in Shasta, and it still wouldn’t be full. There’s also the fact that the more water that’s in the reservoir, the more water it takes for the lake to rise. “Those last feet are hard to fill,” said Burke. “Think of it as a funnel, the bottom of it is easy to fill but as the top gets bigger, it takes a lot more water.” Shasta Dam forms Shasta Lake on the upper Sacramento River, and the reservoir is part of the Central Valley Project, a massive federal system providing drinking water and irrigation for the Central Valley and flood protection for the Sacramento Valley, downstream from the lake. Water releases generate power through the Shasta Powerplant located just below the Shasta Dam, about 9 miles upstream from Keswick Dam. As of Thursday, Shasta Lake was 95% full, and at 118% of its historical average. The reservoir would actually be overflowing its rim, except water gets released through the dam to meet environmental requirements that help support fish habitat on the Sacramento River. In wet years, water is also released to create space in the reservoir for additional water from storms, which helps prevent flooding and ensure that water flows through the dam that produces hydropower. “We will be upping the releases to 8,000 CFS on Friday,” Burke said. “We are expecting a storm this weekend.” CFS, or cubic feet per second, is a common way to measure the amount of water flowing at a given time. Shasta Lake isn’t the only reservoir to make remarkable gains amid California’s water bounty. As of Thursday, the state’s second-largest reservoir, Lake Oroville, was at 89% of capacity and 122% of its historical average, while Folsom was 77% full and 116% of its historical average. The state’s major reservoirs are 117% of average for this time of year, according to the California Department of Water Resources. The snowpack is also well above its historical average, at 114% as of Thursday. While the reservoirs and snowpack are both doing well this year, there’s one key water source that still lags behind: groundwater. It accounts for anywhere between about 40% in a normal year up to 60% of the state’s total water supply during drier and drought conditions, said Mike Anderson, state climatologist with the Department of Water Resources. “Nearly 85 percent of Californians depend on groundwater for some portion of their water supply and some communities are 100 percent reliant on groundwater for their water supply,” Anderson wrote in an email to SFGATE. As of Thursday, 32% of the nearly 4,000 groundwater wells monitored by the state were below normal, while 33% were at normal levels and 35% above normal, according to the Department of Water Resources. “California has had two years of relatively positive water conditions, but that is no reason to let our guard down now,” Anderson said in a news release last week about the above-average snowpack. “With three record-setting multi-year droughts in the last 15 years and warmer temperatures, a well above average snowpack is needed to reach average runoff. The wild swings from dry to wet that make up today’s water years make it important to maintain conservation while managing the runoff we do receive. Our water years moving forward will see more extreme dry times interrupted by very wet periods like we saw this winter.” |
97963
From: Redhart, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: cali reservoirs full or near full...
| excellent news. |
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None
97962
From: shatterbrain, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Re: cali reservoirs full or near full...
| Even Death Valley now has recreational kayaking. |
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