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Interactive California Reservoir Levels Dashboard
- nullish_signal 4y ago[flagged]
- akira2501 4y agoIt's a globally exported crop that's worth billions every year in direct sales. There's quite a bit of local economic activity that's tied to this production. You can stop it, the way you'd stop any export, tax it until it is no longer profitable to sell. You may get much more than you bargained for, though.
- BurningFrog 4y agoThe underlying problem is that what you pay for water in California differs by many orders of magnitude depending on historical accident, and many almond farmers pay next to nothing. A reform with a unifor water price would solve most of California's water issues. But I don't foresee that happening.
- mikeg8 4y agoI’m a little confused by this comment. Agriculture, including the almond growers, only pay for the cost to permit, construct, and maintain a well, as well as electricity for the pump which is almost negligible. Municipalities may have a water provider with a per gallon price. And finally, a very small few rely on rain water collection. Having a “uniform water price” would never be possible, and even if it was, I am very skeptical it would “solve most of California’s water issues”.
- BurningFrog 4y agoGround water usage is a separate problem, but I'm confident (without looking it up) that surface water (rivers & reservoirs) is the dominating source of farming water.
- barbazoo 4y agoWhat have the almonds done to you, friend?!
- nullish_signal 4y agoAlmonds are a dry, splintery Packaging Peanuts used to fill up Space in Milk, Yogurt, Trail Mix, etc... Comparing prices of Trail Mix with/without Almonds for example, and I usually find the Almond alternative is Cheaper, because (I believe) they're basically subsidized by California's over-use of Grandfathered Water Rights.
- Underphil 4y agoYou can take the user out of Reddit, but...
- nullish_signal 4y agoI'm a channer, don't accuse me of being a r*dditor
- krasin 4y agoI find the official graphs easier to understand: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain https://cdec.water.ca.gov/resapp/RescondMain (it's also possible to pick dates to compare in adjacent tabs)
- harpiaharpyja 4y agoDoesn't provide the same sense of overall filled volume/capacity, though.
- leoh 4y agoThis is really great because it lets you compare to other years. It also really shows the uptick in fullness due to the recent storms if you click on a resevoir.
- herpderperator 4y agoSorry for the dumb question... but what does "historical average" mean, which years? Is it all years? A subset? If CA has been in a drought for so long, why is the historical average often higher?
- hammock 4y agoGood question. I found this info on another page: "historical average level of the reservoirs at the same time of year (e.g. March 8th) between 1960 and 2010." https://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-level/ https://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-level/
- stevesearer 4y agoOur largest local reservoir, Lake Cachuma, has gained 20000+ acre feet of water today which is something like 11ft of height.
- chasebank 4y agoSide note - Most of CA reservoirs do not allow human contact. Meaning, no swimming, tubing, skiing, wakeboarding, etc. It stems from an archaic law before all potable water sources were filtered. Big bear reservoir and Lake Nacimiento, for instance, are specifically allowed for human contact in the law. Personally, I wish we could open up all the reservoirs to all recreation. [0] https://www.kqed.org/news/11780692/why-cant-you-swim-in-most-of-the-bay-area-lakes https://www.kqed.org/news/11780692/why-cant-you-swim-in-most...
- happyopossum 4y agoThat’s bay are drinking water reservoirs - which are not “most of CA reservoirs”. Just look at the parent website, all of the largest reservoirs listed there, and most of the others, allow swimming and water recreation.
- chasebank 4y agoIf you read the citation and subsequent law, it’s most CA reservoirs, not just Bay Area. That just happens to be an article for the Bay Area. For instance, I live in Santa Barbara and all of our local reservoirs have human contact bans.
- spike021 4y agoAdmittedly I haven't been to all lakes in California, but one time I went to Lake Shasta to do house boating for a week, and nearly every beach we landed on/near was littered with everything from old tires to car batteries to shotgun shells, plus the usual food/drink garbage. I'd personally rather not allow "all recreation" in reservoirs used for drinking water.
- chasebank 4y agoHere’s the thing, all these reservoirs still allow boating, camping, etc, which contribute to the problems you're mentioning. They are already allowed. I’m just saying, it’s silly to not allow swimming as well. If you’d like to ban reservoir contact in totality, that’s one thing, but to not allowing swimming in the lake while all other activity is alllowed is just ridiculous.
- FriedPickles 4y agoWow, there's a blue bar that goes off the chart: Whiskeytown reservoir, 102% capacity. Sure enough, that reservoir is filled to the brim and overflowed today into the giant Glory Hole: https://www.redding.com/story/news/local/2023/01/09/recent-rains-cause-whiskeytown-lake-to-spill-into-the-glory-hole/69792668007/ https://www.redding.com/story/news/local/2023/01/09/recent-r...
- numtel 4y agoAfaik, whiskeytown is kept close to full all year since it's downstream of the trinity lake reservoir, which looks more like lake Oroville with exposed shoreline.
- saagarjha 4y ago> The Glory Hole was a part of what she wanted to share The author of this has to be pulling out leg
- bee_rider 4y agoI don’t think you are supposed to put your leg in in the first place!
- ummonk 4y agoEnglebright reservoir too
- FriedPickles 4y agoLooks like that one is designed to spill over the top. Fascinating. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englebright_Dam#/media/File:EnglebrightDam2006.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englebright_Dam#/media/File:En...
- leoh 4y agoIn order to earnestly evaluate the meaning of `% of capacity`, we really need the stdev of the mean.
- collectordrx 4y agoAs a quick warning, there are some very questionable ads displaying on that site. Please be careful of viewing at work.
- jimmyed 4y ago[flagged]
- maxbond 4y agoPeople are not responsible for the ads they see. Ads can be targeted demographically and/or by time of day. Ads can be mistargeted or targeted very broadly. I regularly get ads for things, including risque things, that I am not in the market for & have not been looking for.
- kornhole 4y agoublock origin extension will fix that for you.
- gourneau 4y agoBTW the author has one of the best FIRE (Financial Independence to Retire Early) calculators as well https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-tools/ https://engaging-data.com/early-retirement-calculators-and-t...
- abhayhegde 4y agoI can't believe the timing of this link. I just watched a Wendover productions video on how NYC gets its water [0]. It was mindblowingly simple, but unimaginably expensive. Thanks for the link on California Reservoir. Can't wait to dig more on how this works. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDLkOWW0_xg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDLkOWW0_xg
- tims33 4y agoAnd Hetch Hetchy is here: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/11275500/#parameterCode=00054&period=P30D&compare=true https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring-location/11275500/#par... I'm assuming this dam is separate either because it is in a National Park and controlled by San Francisco.
- hyperion2010 4y agoDespite historical rains these reservoirs are still not back to their historical average levels. I'm guessing they will continue to rise as water flows down hill following the storms, but it is hard to get a sense of what is going on because the first derivative is not displayed.
- jimt1234 4y agoIt's all about the snowpack, and this makes me happy: https://cdec.water.ca.gov/snowapp/sweq.action https://cdec.water.ca.gov/snowapp/sweq.action
- bcrosby95 4y agoAlmost to 100%, so that's nice. We've had several years where we had a very wet month then literally nothing after. And hopefully we don't get any abnormally warm storms that melts some of that.
- viewtransform 4y agoThis visualization shows historical snow accumulation each month https://engaging-data.com/california-snowpack-levels/ https://engaging-data.com/california-snowpack-levels/
- foolfoolz 4y agoreservoirs aren’t low because of rainfall, they are lower than historical average because we use way more water now
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThe same site's precipitation graph suggests that despite some recent precipitation, it's still only above average, rather than 'historic' for the period since last October: https://engaging-data.com/california-precipitation-levels/ https://engaging-data.com/california-precipitation-levels/
- ummonk 4y agoSnowpack is already at 85% of April 1st averages (and almost double the average for this point in the season). All of that snow will be melting in early summer. I expect they're going to keep the reservoirs less filled than usual in the Spring, to ensure there is capacity to avoid getting running into issues like Oroville reservoir did a few years back.
- gumby 4y agoThe problem is that the snowpack is part of the storage system. The warmer summers melt the snowpack sooner in the year, reducing the amount of water being stored. I've hiked in winter snow in August, and even September, but not for a few years. We survive that because the reservoirs are designed to hold more than a year's worth of water demand. But the integrity of the system depends on all the parts operating to some degree.
- POPOSYS 4y agoDoes anything like this exist for the whole world? I am sure there is, it is such an important thing, but I do not know / cannot find it. Anything from UNO / NASA / EU / whatever org?
- hammock 4y agoHow much of this is due to climate change and can be solved by ending fossil fuel use, and how much is due to agricultural irrigation?
- wvoch235 4y agoNot an answer to the question but an aside related to it: After driving around in the Central Valley and looking at the massive agricultural industry there, it becomes very apparent that we're pumping a significant amount of water out of the ground and allowing it to evaporate into the atmosphere. I wonder how all of this additional moisture is impacting climate change as well. The scale of it all leads me to believe it's not insignificant, and the Central Valley is not the only place where this goes on.
- davidmurdoch 4y agoThe legend uses the word "Filled". "Filled" means "containing as much or as many as is possible or normal. Opposite of empty." A better term for the legend might be "current level"?