Record-breaking storms provides boost for California's water supply
The North Bay saw record rainfall last week, which is good news for the state's water supply that has been healthy for the past two years after a lengthy drought.
The heavy precipitation was still visible in the increased volume of water flowing in a number of Marin County creeks and waterfalls Tuesday.
"Well I just wanted to get some footage along here with all the amazing colors and the water," North Bay resident Hillary explained as she made her way down the Cataract Trail near Stinson Beach. "I always find it amusing that the old-timers on the mountain were not so creative with their waterfall names. We have Cataract and Cascade, which both mean waterfall."
Those waterfalls are still gushing as the tail end of the storm system finally makes its way through the Tamalpais watershed. Hillary came out to enjoy the beauty of it all, without having to brave the deluge.
"Yeah, this is everything from the previous storm that's left coming down," she explained. "And so it's not crazy, but it's much more manageable for walking."
All the water is making its way into a Marin Water system that is now at 88% capacity. For late November, that puts reservoirs at 136% of normal for this time of year. That's the fullest the system has been at this point in the water season since Kent Dam was raised in 1983. And it's not just Marin County seeing the benefits of the storm. There was also good news from Sonoma Water last week.
"You look at well above what the average for this time of the year is, so going into the water year with that amount of rainfall in our reservoirs already captured, it's a wonderful way to start," said Sonoma Water General Manager Grant Davis.
And Californians can now see what that start looks like for the entirety of the state. Looking at the water season chart that compares different years, the blue line is the jump the state just received from last week's rain. It not only kick started the season in a big way, it puts this year on a similar starting trajectory that we saw back in 2016-2017, the drought-busting wettest year on record in Northern California.
"Yeah, I wouldn't expect to see 2016-2017 just yet," laughed Jay Lund with the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. "That was a one-in-a-100-year kind of wet water year."
Lund points to the state's major reservoirs which are now climbing above their historical averages, with sharp jumps compliments from the storm.
"Payoff, yeah," Lund said. "And worries about floods. Because we have a long way to go in this wet season, and we could have floods."
So the storm system was enough to push the state's water situation towards fuller than normal, with a very long way to go.
"We have a lot more balancing that can happen in the next three months," Lund said of what's still to come.
As recent winters keep showing, average is hardly normal in California. The state finds itself swinging from one extreme to another. But it's impossible to know if that kind of extreme rainfall is going to be the exception or the rule this winter. And as Northern California has just seen, it's hard to ever really know what's coming right around the next corner.