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Storms drop 4.4 billion gallons into O.C. water supply
December 19th, 2008, 6:37 pm · 16 Comments · posted by Gary Robbins, science writer-editor
The Orange County Water District coralled 4.4 billion gallons of rainwater behind Prado Dam during the storms that pounded Southern California on Monday and Wednesday — a bounty worth about $9 million dollars.
The water will be released down the Santa Ana River and diverted into OCWD’s recharge system.
“If there were no more rain, it would take us approximately 4 to 6 weeks to completely drain this pool into our recharge system,” says OCWD’s Adam Hutchinson.
But more rain is one the way.
“Light to moderate rain and mountain snow are possible Monday through Monday night as (a) storm moves across the region,” the National Weather Service says in an advisory. “Another storm is possible by Christmas Day. ”
This weekend will be dry, but windy. Forecasters say offshore winds will gust 25 to 30 mph on Saturday. The day’s high temperatures will be in the 60s.
Cool satellite photo … of this week’s New England ice storm
Follow Sciencedude on Twitter at grobbins, and add him as a friend on Facebook. I’d like to welcome new readers Kim Martin and Lisette Guzman.
Special request to Sciencedude readers: We’ll be covering Christmas across Orange County live on ocregister.com, from 4 p.m. Dec. 24 to 4 p.m. Dec. 25. Could you please e-mail me a sentence or two now telling me what you’ll be doing during that period? You also can send the e-mail during the 24-hour Christmas period. Your submission can be anything, such as having dinner with friends or trying to prevent your kids from opening presents early. Please send e-mail to grobbins@ocregister.com
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whats that in foot acres?
One acre foot equals 326,700 gallons. I asked OCWD to define the water in billions of gallons instead of acre feet because a.f. is not commonly used, or understood, by the general public.
Can we get a total cumulative rain measurement YTD? It would be helpful to compare this year’s rain to previous years. Is the drought forecast still in effect? If you won’t provide this information do you know where we can get it? Thanks!
To ocobserver: I’ve presented this info a couple of times this week. To recap: Orange County is still is a moderate drought, as determined by the US Drought Monitor, a service run by government and university scientists. It is possible that OC will be reclassified as being “abnormally dry” if we get more rain soon. Which could happen. As noted earlier, John Wayne Airport has received about 4.6 inches of precipitation since the rainy season began on July 1. That’s more than an inch above normal. However, JWA has received just under 10 inches since January 1, which is about one inch below normal. Earlier this fall, I published an item saying that the Center for Climate Prediction forecast drier than normal conditions through December. That forecast was actually true — until the first of this week’s storms hit on Dec. 15.
Thank God for the Prado Dam! Imagine - if we didn’t have it, all that water would have just flowed right out to sea. Add to that the geniuses who realized that we could replenish our underground aquifer by creating those percolating ponds along the Santa Ana river and we really are lucky.
Gary, thank you. But I think giving us rainfalls for 4 or 5 various OC locations (ie, North, South, East, West) would give us a far more representative measurement of our rainfall. And normally our annual rainfall season is measured commencing July 1st and not January 1st, correct? From what I understand our rainfall last season, if you measure from various representative locations throughout OC, was actually above normal last season. Correct? Just using the John Wayne location as your measurement guide does not accurately reflect rainfall totals. So according to your post the ‘drier than normal’ prediction through December was just plain wrong, correct? And from what I understand we are in for much more rain throughout the holidays, right? Good news. Appears that we’re in good shape as I expected we would be. Thanks again for the update!
I wish I had a reliable north, south, east, west database for rainfall, but I don’t. The NWS collects information from several places in Orange County, but some of them are bunched together. For example, NWS collects rain and heat info for Fullerton, Yorba Linda, Santa Ana (John Wayne) and Newport Harbor. But that’s not really a good distribution pattern. We have 2 sites in north county, 1 in central, and one at the coast. We could really use sites in north coastal OC and south coastal OC, as well as southeastern. I use John Wayne Airport because it is located roughly in the middle of the county, in the approximate middle of our climate zones. It would be misleading to simply report Fullerton Airport. It’s not representative of the entire county. Fullerton did fairly well in rain last year. But JWA is more representative, and its rainfall was below average … We’re in better shape than we were in, but we’re not in good shape. Remember, we import half of our water. So while it’s good to get rain in OC, most of the major reservoirs are located in other parts of the state. And they’ve been drawn down by two consecutive years of below average rainfall. The two storms we’ve had down here didn’t drop enough rain to replenish our northern reservoirs. But maybe that will happen. December has been far rainier than normal. It’s entirely possible the trend will continue. As for the CPC’s prediction — and note that it is a prediction — our region is wetter than normal. So the prediction is wrong. But it came within a couple of weeks of being accurate. The prediction referred to the period from October 1 to Dec. 31. Keep in mind how dry the county was when the Freeway Fire hit.
And we’ll need every drop.
Gary, I recall reading that the sierra’s had near record snowpacks last season. And it’s my understanding that they’ve had nice accumulations so far this year too. And as much as I would love to accept JWA as a representative rainfall database point for all of Orange County, common sense won’t let me. We should use all database points available to us for a more representative picture. The county is usually dry in the latter months of summer even after normal rainfall during the wet season. We live in a desert afterall! But thanks for your feedback anyway and enjoy your holiday season!
The Sierra Nevada did not have record snowpack last year.
did i hear, “Thank God for the Dams”? why, so they can charge for something that should be free?
I don’t understand your comment. California’s dams have been costly to build, but they’re essential to the public. The Seven Oaks Dam that was built on the upper Santa Ana River is regarded as an important flood control dam. The reservoir built in Hemet has helped the region get through the drought conditions of the past two years, and is meant to be a key water supply in the event of a catastrophic earthquake.
ocoserver uy a noran if th e 5th tegree
Gary, been enjoying your columns. Here’s a So. Orange County weather station in Mission Viejo I check out all the time.
http://www.robnlisa.net/weather/wx.htm
Be sure to scroll all the way down the page: lots of info here.
Keep up the good work. Interesting to learn about the 4.4 billion gallons of water this week-Thank you God!
KK
Kathy…Thanks for the link to the Mission Viejo gauge. It linked me to several others I need.
Just to put this in proportion, I asked a friend, an engineer who works for MWD how many gallons per day they pump from the Colorado; it works out to 900,000,000 gallons. So, this is equal to about 5 days pull from the Colorado aqueduct.
OC observer, to expand on Gary’s comments, the Sierra snowpack was running about normal through about midwinter. Then, remember how dry our March was? So was the sierras, and as a consequence, the snowpack ended it significantly below normal for the year.
I have not heard formal reports on the snowpack for this year yet, but in their log the rangers that work the high country of Yosemite commented on how little snow they had gotten through yesterday.