Sonoma County reservoirs recovering from drought conditions in just about a month
LAKE MENDOCINO, Sonoma County -- At the start of this water year, it was very possible that the North Bay was facing the most serious drought challenge. The past four weeks or so have been something of a small miracle for Sonoma County, where reservoirs have taken a dramatic rebound.
3,000 cubic feet per second is now being released from Lake Mendocino, and it really does signal a dramatic change of fortune here in the North Bay. And while it wasn't inconceivable, it happened in four to five weeks.
"If that rain had been separated out over 15 weeks," explained Donald Seymour with Sonoma Water. "We wouldn't have seen the benefits at the reservoirs."
Lake Mendocino is full and releasing water when just months year ago it was largely empty.
"It really took that type of sequential number of storms to saturate the watershed," Seymour said. "And create that huge amount of runoff into reservoirs. Which are basically now both fully recovered."
The other reservoir would be Lake Sonoma.
"It's like the cavalry came," said Charlotte of Healdsburg. "It's a miracle."
Sonoma has made an incredible climb from record lows. It is now closing in on a full storage pool.
"We're almost there. About 15,000 acre-feet short," Seymour said. "Which I think over the next 10 days, that natural info I will probably get us there."
And the reservoirs aren't just pushing capacity, the Army Corps of Engineers now has great flexibility in managing lake levels, which might allow for more storage depending on what the weather brings.
"It's exciting to think that we could go from being in such a water deficit last year and the year before," Seymour said. "To this year may be having an additional volume of water in both of those reservoirs, putting us in such a better position than we've been in for a long time."
But weather still holds all the answers if we want more storage. We will ultimately need more rain to keep chipping away at the drought.