Reservoirs Inching Up but Drought Remains

Snow was piling up, rains were tumbling down and for the first time in a long time, more water was flowing into California’s major reservoirs Wednesday than was flowing out.

Hundreds of remote automated rain gauges and snow monitors were flashing encouraging readings--7 inches, 8 inches, even 9 inches a day at some spots--to computers in the drought war room atop a high-rise state office building here.

But even occasional flood warnings could not impress William J. Helms.

“People get pretty excited about this kind of water,” he said, “but what they forget is that nature can turn off the tap as easily as turn it on.”

Helms is California’s top drought watcher, a flood-control expert enlisted to use his computerized counts of snowpacks and river flows to tell state officials when the second dry period in the last dozen years has ended.

The verdict Wednesday: Not yet. Not by a long shot.

Despite recent wicked winter storms and predictions of more to come, Helms stuck by his drought-watchers maxim: What matters is not how much rain falls, but how much falls in the right places at the right time.

“You have got to get it in the bucket or it doesn’t count,” he said, and California’s buckets--its reservoirs--did not even begin to show significant benefits from recent storms until Wednesday, after dry soil became saturated.

Heartening gains were registered at the state’s largest reservoirs--Shasta Lake grew by 37,000 acre-feet during the 24 hours ended Wednesday morning, and Lake Oroville swelled by 50,000 acre-feet--but total statewide reserves still are below 70% of average.

“It is the first time this year the reservoirs have started to increase,” he said, scanning printouts of reservoir inflows in an unremarkable and compact office he shares with three other people and dozens of maps and charts. “They were still dropping up until yesterday, despite the rain.”

Only when those reservoirs show 100% of average and are supplemented with a substantial Sierra snowpack will Helms recommend that the Department of Water Resources declare an end to the drought of 1987-88.

“It’s embarrassing to have rivers overflowing and still be talking about a drought,” said Helms, referring to minor flooding on the Smith and Sacramento rivers late Tuesday and early Wednesday. “But we could have flooding all over the valley and still have a drought situation.

“What is important is reservoir capacity and a good snowpack, and we don’t have either one yet.”

The state could have both by the end of the year, he said, or it could have to wait until the end of the decade. He said that he has been disappointed too often by the vagaries of California weather to hazard a guess.

“We’ve seen so many storms come in--building and building and building--and then just fade away,” he said.

Helms’ job normally is to decide if such storms will cause floods, not fill reservoirs. He is the flood operation warning coordinator for the Department of Water Resources.

But when the floods of early 1986 were followed by an unusually dry winter, the flood operations branch and its computerized rain gauges, snow sensors and river monitors were enlisted to track the drought.

For nearly a decade, the state has worked with federal officials and others to operate a network of remote sensors to measure rain and snow throughout the state and chart its flow through rivers, reservoirs and flood channels.

Helms said that in addition to several hundred automated rain gauges around the state, meteorologists operate about 80 “snow pillows” that automatically estimate snow depths and calculate the volume of water stored in the snowpack. River flows also are automatically monitored at bridges and weirs.

Hourly readings from each station are automatically transmitted to Sacramento, where in wet years they help state and federal agencies decide how to regulate river flows to minimize the effects of floods.

Different Use

Now the same data is used to minimize the effects of drought.

In the meantime, state officials are pressing ahead with contingency plans for a continuation of the drought next year. A package of proposals and bills is scheduled to be presented to Gov. George Deukmejian on Jan. 21.

“If this turns out to be a wet year, (the proposals) can still serve as a base for the next dry year or two--or three,” Helms said, “because drought is going to happen again sometime.”