Although October was warm and dry, Sonoma County water officials said reservoirs are in good condition after the previous two wet winters.
From Cloverdale, Ken has been fishing on Lake Sonoma for as long as the lake has been around.
“Since the lake was built,” Ken said, pulling his boat up to the dock, “so yeah, that’s sometime in the 80s.”
With four decades of experience on the lake, Ken said the reservoir is in a very healthy state as of late October.
“Yeah, they filled it up 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 had for years and years,” Sonoma Water’s David Rabbitt told CBS News Bay Area on Wednesday. “Lake Sonoma is currently at 88% capacity, which is pretty amazing on this date in October, before any substantial rainfall occurs.”
CBS
Rabbitt is chairman of the Sonoma Water Board of Directors. He says Lake Sonoma has benefited from two solid years of rain and changes in reservoir management.
In recent years they have released more water than they thought was necessary in anticipation of major 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 past two years of good rainfall have coincided with improved forecasts, and yields have been in the ballpark of a 10% increase in storage.
“Over the last few years we have been able to implement FIRO (Forecast Informed Reservoir Operations) on Lake Mendocino and to some extent on Lake Sonoma,” Rabbitt said. “And it’s been really beneficial to us, in terms of having more water in the reservoir, behind the dam, during these very changeable weather years.”
