What a difference a month can make - California major reservoirs side by side comparison chart.

01/26/2023 | Self

[know.your.why]

Info from California Department of Water Resources. Graphic from a 'deplorable conservative'. Gonna be interesting to see the increases certain to come with the Spring thaw. White water rafting biz will see a big boost I bet.

[know.your.why]

https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain

[Round Earther]

Actually, that is good news for the entire country.

[CatOwner]

I wonder how much of each of these reservoirs are impacted by snow runoff.

[Getready]

There are over 1000 reservoirs in California per Wikipedia. Would like to know their status also. Any water is good, but the season ain’t over yet. Lots of groundwater replenishment needed and who knows if the rest of the season is dry.
Don’t bring out the party hats yet.

[Karliner]

This translates to the next five years of drought how?

[DownInFlames]

Re#2. What nobody is talking about is Lake Mead or Powell. These are major reservoirs that produce hydroelectric power and water for Nevada, Arizona, and SoCal.

[know.your.why]

Yeah...Colorado river feeding that one. Not sure how thats gonna go.

[dangus]

Keep in mind: this is BEFORE the snow melts. The largest snowpack in history. Snowpacks are from where California gets a massive hunk of its water. So when they were saying California is still in a drought, they were being quite wrong.

[Mom MD]

The Colorado mountain snowpack is good this year (so far)

[dangus]

Now THAT’s another matter.

[SFConservative]

I wonder how much of each of these reservoirs are impacted by snow runoff.

All of the large ones could be almost full at this point from the precipitation so far in their watersheds, but they are deliberately kept well short of full to leave room for snowmelt runoff. The system as a whole has both storage and flood control functions. The US Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the State seem to have a very good handle on managing this whole network of rivers and reservoirs, at least in wet years.

[gettinolder]

Thanks for the post I’m fascinated by this information.

This graph or visual is not overly user friendly. Probably just me though lol.

[chopperk]

All of them,,,,,unfortunately Ca. has not built a new reservoir in almost 50 years but has expanded their population and land use almost 10 fold. Keep voting in those Dems California! Seems Ca. wants the illegals to support their liberalism and eventually the Latinos will want to secede and become Venezuela. Every country in Central and South America is Liberal Latino dictatorships, they never get it right.

[Alas Babylon!]

From the US Drought Monitor:

Map released: January 26, 2023

This Week's Drought Summary

Over the past few weeks, a series of atmospheric rivers brought significant amounts of rain and snow across parts of the West leading to improvements in soil moisture, streamflow, reservoirs levels and snowpack. This above-normal precipitation led to abnormal dryness and drought improvements in California, the Pacific Northwest, Great Basin and the central Rockies. Despite these improvements, long-term drought persists across much of the West. In the eastern United States, winter storms brought cooler temperatures and above-normal precipitation from the Mississippi Valley to the East Coast, leading to abnormal dryness and drought improvements in the Midwest, Northeast and Southeast. Meanwhile, persistent dryness led to the expansion of drought in the southern Plains and northern Rockies, while much of the Southern and High Plains regions remain largely unchanged.

Looking Ahead

The National Weather Service Weather Prediction Center has forecasted a winter storm (valid January 25 – January 26) that will track through the eastern Great Lakes overnight. Bands of heavy snow are expected over northern New York and New England. A second area of low pressure will develop over Southern New England and move into the Gulf of Maine by early Thursday where over 10” of snow is forecasted for interior locations. Moving into next week (valid January 28 – February 1), the forecast calls persistently cold temperatures from the northern/central Rockies into the Upper Midwest, while the West will trend colder. the Southeast on the warmer side of normal, especially after the weekend. At 8 – 14 days, the Climate Prediction Center Outlook (valid February 2 – February 8) calls for below-normal temperatures over most of the country except for the Southeast and Alaska. Parts of the Northeast, southern Southwest and central Alaska can expect near-normal temperatures, while parts of the Southeast and western Alaska have the greatest probability of warmer-than-normal temperatures. Most of the U.S. can expect near- to slightly above-normal precipitation with the probability of near-normal precipitation occurring from the northern Plains to the Northeast and from southern California to the southern Plains, including western and southeast Alaska. Southern parts of the Southwest and Alaska have increased odds for below-normal precipitation.

[Organic Panic]

Great. Now they can empty them for some minnows.

[Boomer]

California needs 10-20 times this many reservoirs. A waste of 95% of the rain water runs into the ocean.

[j.havenfarm]

Not quite. The six on the lower left are not. Trinity is vast at 2 million acre feet, but is so low because it’s essentially the emergency flood control for the Sacramento River watershed. The most impacted are it and clockwise to Don Pedro and New Melones. The big ones, Shasta (4.5M) and Oroville (3.5M) are essentially shut up tight, except for releases to spin the turbines. To take one smaller one, Folsom, they’re dumping 50% more than the inflow to create a back up for flood control on the American River. Bottom line is it’s an in exact science to regulate the outflows here during the winter to avoid flooding if there should be warm weather and a rapid snowmelt in the spring.

[DuncanWaring]

Colorado mountain snowpack was fairly decent in ‘21 and ‘22, also.

Until it was hit by an extended period of warm/dry winds, which led to most of it evaporating and blowing away, rather than melting into the rivers.

[Chickensoup]

Not really.

VDH has been talking about this.

The California ptb are letting the water out through the reservoirs and not letting them fill up.

They refuse to hold the water.

They wish to end agriculture in California.

Listen to his podcasts at victorhanson.com