Sonoma water officials say reservoirs in good shape heading into rainy season
While the month of October has been warm and dry, water officials in Sonoma County said reservoirs are in good shape after the two previous wet winters.
Up from Cloverdale, Ken has been fishing on Lake Sonoma as long as the lake has been here.
"Since the lake was built," Ken said, pulling his boat toward the dock, "So, yeah, that's in the 80s sometime."
With four decades of experience on the lake, Ken said the reservoir is in a very healthy state on this late October day.
"Yeah they filled it pretty full last winter," he said. "That makes it fuller now."
"To date, I think we probably have more water in Lake Sonoma at this date, than we have for years and years," David Rabbitt with Sonoma Water told CBS News Bay Area on Wednesday. "Lake Sonoma right now is 88% of capacity, which is pretty amazing at this October date, before any substantial rains."
Rabbitt is Chair of the Sonoma Water Board of Directors. He says Lake Sonoma has benefited from two solid years of rain, and changes to the management of the reservoir.
In years past, they have released more water than they thought was necessary, in anticipation of big weather events.
"That really had to do with the 1954 rule book that they were using at the time. And we thought we could do better," he explained.
That is finally changing. The last two years of good rainfall have coincided with the improved forecasting, and the payoff has been something in the ballpark of a 10% increase in storage.
"These last couple years we've been able to implement FIRO (Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations) on Lake Mendocino and to a certain degree on Lake Sonoma," Rabbitt said. "And it has really been beneficial for us, in terms of having a larger quantity of water in the reservoir, behind the dam, through these really volatile weather years."