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A dry March in Northern California leaves Lake Oroville only half full

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on April 16, 2008 at 5:34 am

From the Redding Searchlight:

Since heavy snow blanketed the north state’s high country in the first two months of the year, few flakes have fallen and the snowpack has shriveled.

“Ever since mid February we have been falling behind fairly quickly,” said Pat Titus, a fire battalion captain with the U.S. Forest Service in Mount Shasta who conducts snow surveys. Surveys at the end of March and beginning of April showed the snowpack to be above average for this time of year, but not as beefy as those waiting for its melt had hoped.

“For the past six weeks we’ve been really dry,” said Jeff McCracken, spokesman with the Bureau of Reclamation’s Sacramento office.

March was the driest in half a century for the north state, according to Western Regional Climate Center Figures. And with spring in full bloom, the snow isn’t likely to start piling up again, Titus said. He said snowpack numbers usually don’t go up much more after April. “It’s not likely we would see any improvement,” he said.

Read the full text of the article from the Redding Searchlight by clicking here.

The dry March is affecting levels at Lake Oroville. The lake is the start point for the State Water Project, which supplies water to Southern California, as well as agricultural lands in the southern San Joaquin Valley. From the Chico Enterprise Record:

At this time of year, with spring rains working in conjunction with spring snowmelt, the lake can be expected to rise for at least another month. Not this year.

Mother Nature turned off the spigot nearly two months ago. Since Feb. 24, the Enterprise-Record’s weather station in south Chico has seen just five days of measurable rain with no gully-washers to speak of — never more than six-hundredths of an inch. It hasn’t rained a drop in April.

It hasn’t been much better in the drainages feeding Lake Oroville. And that’s bad news because the lake is threatening to become a glorified mud puddle by the end of summer.

The trends don’t look good. The lake level on March 31 was the lowest it has been on that date since 1977, at the end of the worst drought in recent California history. At that time, the lake held 1.5 million acre-feet of water. This year, the lake held 1.7 million acre-feet. Last year, the lake held 3.1 million acre-feet. The historical average for March 31 is 2.7 million acre-feet.

There would be no cause for alarm if the mountains were full of snow, but the winter snowpack, once so promising, is now below average again.

According to state water officials, Lake Oroville is 49% full. Read the full text of the editorial from the Chico Enterprise-Record by clicking here.

April 16, 2008 · Filed Under DWR & State Water Project, Drought, Weather & Snowpack, Water Storage