Calif. reservoirs replenished after drought
An arm of Lake Orville on June 22, 2015, is nearly depleted. Photo/LTN file
By Amy Graff, San Francisco Chronicle
California’s reservoirs are brimming after a winter of relentless storms and a late-spring heatwave that thawed the a big chunk of the snowpack.
The Golden State’s system of 154 major reservoirs is holding 34,464,000 acre-feet according to the most recent June 12 state report with data pulled from an array of entities that own and manage these bodies of water, including the Department of Water Resources, the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers and several city water departments.
The state’s reservoirs held 25,628,000 acre-feet on the same date last year, when El Niño was expected to bring extraordinary weather systems, but instead hit us with weak storms dropping average precipitation.