Two of California’s largest reservoirs in Northern California are near 100% capacity, and the newly-resurrected Tulare Lake in the Central Valley is near its peak size, as the spring runoff from a rainy winter continues.
Lake Shasta, which is run by the federal government, and Lake Oroville, which supplies the state water project, are at 98% and 99% capacity, respectively. [emphasis, links added]
Authorities are carefully managing both to prevent overflows.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports:
Shasta Lake in Shasta County and Lake Oroville in Butte County, where much of Northern California’s water is stored, are at 98% and 99% of their total capacity, respectively, for the first time in five years, according to data from the state Department of Water Resources.
Lake Oroville, which supports 27 million Californians, has experienced water storage whiplash over the last five years — a sign of how volatile the state’s hydrology has been. The last time water storage levels neared capacity was in July 2019. By August 2021, it had hit historic lows.
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Also close to full capacity are Folsom Lake in the Sierra Nevada foothills, now at 93% of its total capacity, and Castaic Lake in Los Angeles County, at 96%.
By 2021, Lake Oroville had dipped so low that it had to shut off its hydroelectric plant for the first time since the facility’s construction half a century ago.
And just a few years before that, during the last extremely rainy winter, the lake overflowed, damaging both the main and the emergency spillway and creating a risk of collapse.
Meanwhile, the Chronicle adds, Tulare Lake has reached 178 square miles, which may be its peak size.
The lake, which dried up during the last century due to water diversion projects, has reemerged due to runoff from heavy rains and snow this past winter, which defied predictions and ended a crippling three-year drought.
Californians feared heavy flooding due to the sheer size of the snowpack on the Sierra Nevada mountains.
But a cool spring has kept the snowmelt at a steady pace rather than a rush, thus far avoiding the worst-case scenario.
Top photo YouTube screencap of Lake Shasta
Read more at Breitbart
This spring season has been unusually cool, even cold by California standards, which has fortunately tempered the rate of snowmelt that is preventing uncontrolled flooding.
Whatever happened to governor Newsom’s statement that California is in a permanent drought? I lived in California for too long and it is natural for the state to fluctuate from drought to very heavy rain fall. The climate change movement exploits things that happen naturally to promote its agenda.