With a January seemingly more like July than one of the year’s four principal snowfall months, this OC180NEWS special report looks at the snow pack and other sources of water for West Orange County.
In this report we focus on the areas served by Golden State Water Company, which include Los Alamitos and Rossmoor. Seal Beach is on a separate system.
According to Golden State Water Spokesman John Dewey, about two thirds of our supply comes from local wells. The remainder comes from the Metropolitan Water District.
The MWD gets their water from two sources, namely the Colorado River and the State water project. That’s where the California snowpack plays an important role.
The mountain snowpack, in addition to providing recreation for skiers and snowboarders, provides an important part of our water supply. The state measured the snowpack at the beginning of the year (see related article below), and yesterday conducted the second measurement.
“We’re at about 35% of the February first average,” Chief of the Snow Survey Section, California Department of Water Resources, Dave Rizzardo told OC180NEWS yesterday. “About 22% of where we need to be on April first.”
The primary months for rain and snow are December through March, but December and January are usually wetter than February and March. January was about 84% of average precipitation, but December was the driest on record.
“We’re definitely rivaling 1976/1977, We’re a little bit above that pace right now, but those were the driest years on record,” Rizzardo told OC180NEWS. “We’re just slightly above that pace, but even as dismal as those years were, their peak number is more than we currently have.”
Although Rizzardo told us “we’re running out of wet months to make up the ground,” the state has plenty of water in storage.
“It’s not just a year by year thing. We had a very wet year last year, so the amount of storage we have in the reservoirs is still largely above average for this time of year,” Rizzardo told OC180NEWS. “But if this turns out to be a 40% or 50% of average year, we’ll definitely start to see the reservoir storage by late summer or early fall dip into a below normal situation.”
The MWD perspective is similar. Even though the Colorado River is still recovering from a long term drought, the MWD expects to bring in slightly less than half of its supply from the river.
“Between the two sources [The Colorado River and the State water project] we expect to be able to meet demand and very likely we’ll be able to put water in storage,” MWD Spokesman Bob Muir told OC180NEWS yesterday. “By the end of the year, we had more than 2.5 million acre feet of water in storage, That’s more than a year’s supply of water. We had drawn down our storage to just over 1 million acre feet in 2008/2009, but we have been able to take advantage of last year and put quite a lot in storage, and now we have more than we’ve ever had in storage.”
That’s a good thing, because the forecast does not look very promising.
“Looking out towards the middle of February, it’s mostly dry,” California Department of Water Resources’ Dave Rizzardo Told OC180NEWS. “I saw some chances for some little things trickling through. But, little things trickling through is better than we got during all of December and the early part of January.”
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