The outlook for California’s drought is grim.
The first five months of the year have been the driest on record. Snowpack in the mountains, at its usual April 1 peak, was the smallest it’s been in seven years. Reservoirs are hovering near historic lows for the season, including Lake Shasta, the state’s largest.
California’s reservoir system serves many important functions. Reservoirs allow for water storage throughout the summer and provide recreational space. Releases from reservoirs also help to keep drinking water free of salt and other contaminants. Water is also regularly released into the Delta to help maintain the stability of the region’s ecosystem
But with 2022 off to a record dry start, water managers are concerned that there won’t be enough water in reservoirs to keep meeting all of those needs through the summer months.
After an extraordinarily dry start to the year, the federal government announced Wednesday that most farms in California will likely receive no water from the state’s biggest reservoirs in 2022, the latest fallout from drought and a blow to an agricultural industry already crippled by tight supplies. Cities and towns, meanwhile, will get just a fraction of the water they requested.
An impending third straight year of drought has left California’s federally managed reservoirs, including giant Shasta and Trinity lakes, soiled by cracked earth and “bathtub rings,” and standing as striking images of the state’s aridity. Many of the storage sites are at near-record lows for this point in the wet winter season, and officials at the Bureau of Reclamation say there’s just not enough water for everyone who needs it.
Recent rainfall hasn’t been nearly enough to make a dent in Lake Shasta’s precariously low water levels.
The lakebed where the water has receded still shows cracks where mud has hardened and over the summer, dust devils have swept the fine, dried silt into the air.
The drought has dropped Lake Shasta to its second worst level since the last bucket of concrete was poured for Shasta Dam in December 1945.
In a multi-agency meeting on the state of California’s drought conditions, state officials painted a broader picture on water allocation, lack of available water and what the Golden State is facing in the months and years to come.
Officials expect record low water levels across the state, especially for Oroville and San Luis Reservoir. Jeanine Jones with the California Department of Water Resources said the state is at 58% of average reservoir storage as a whole for this time of year. As of Monday, Aug. 9, Lake Oroville came in at 34% of average and Folsom Lake came in at 35% of average.
Hot, dry, and ‘unrecognizable’ describes July 2021.
The West boiled with record-breaking heat, and persistent drought that has left the Colorado River, Lake Mead and Lake Powell two-thirds empty, a ‘bathtub’ ring lining the shores of the largest water sources serving California.
As more frequent heat waves broke records this summer, our photojournalists documented what it looked like and how we coped.
Droughts are common in California, but this year’s is much hotter and drier than others, evaporating water more quickly from the reservoirs and the sparse Sierra Nevada snowpack that feeds them.
The state’s more than 1,500 reservoirs are 50% lower than they should be this time of year, according to Jay Lund, co-director of the Center for Watershed Sciences at UC Davis.
Satellite images recently released by NASA show how drought has affected Northern California’s Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, the largest reservoirs in the state. NASA compared images taken earlier in June with images taken in the summer of 2019 to illustrate how water levels have declined over the two-year period.
Instead of being flush with newly melted snow, Folsom Lake is the driest it’s been in springtime since the epic drought of 1977. Water levels are so low that temporary pumps probably will be installed to help move water out of the stricken reservoir.
Water levels at Lake Oroville have plunged to the point that its giant hydropower plant could be idled for the first time ever this summer, putting additional strain on California’s troubled electric grid. At Shasta Lake, which feeds the Sacramento River watershed and much of the Central Valley, conditions are so bad that major cities are drawing up conservation plans, farmers have scaled back plantings and environmentalists are angrily warning of extensive fish kills.
Lake Shasta this summer is facing possibly its lowest level in at least 44 years, and that could be bad news for the people who rely on it for drinking and irrigation water, as well as endangered salmon that depend on it to survive. Dam operators have to go all the way back to 1977 to compare how bad this year’s water situation is shaping up to be, said Don Bader, area manager for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which manages the dam. “It’s dry. It’s second worst, so far. It’s probably going to exceed ’77. But the kicker is in ’77 we didn’t have all the requirements that we have now,” Bader said.
