Shasta Lake Rising

[jdonalds]

It's raining again today in Northern California. Of course we had the big rainstorm (4.5" at our house) last Thursday. At the moment we are on track for an average rainfall year, or a little above average. We'll see what the rest of the rainy season brings. It will take a lot more than average rainfall to make up for the California shortfalls.

I've measured a total of 40 inches of rainfall at our house in calendar year 2014 so far, just about average for our house location.

Lake Shasta is up an astounding 31 feet from it's lowest level of -177' on November 29th - just 17 days. For a lake of 365 miles of shoreline when full that is a massive amount of water. I've measured 10.58" of rainfall between 11/29 and today 12/15. So 35" of lake level rise for every inch of rain. Our house is 9 miles from the lake which suggests our rainfall isn't too different than that of the lake area. However the higher the lake is the more inches of rainfall are required for each foot of lake rise due to the slope of the banks.

The last time the lake was lower than -177' was in the year 1977.

At the moment the lake is down 146'. There's hope, not perhaps to fill the lake, but to have a decent level for summer boating, and of course our water shortage.

To me, watching the lake level rise is a good wintertime activity.

 

[007]

Awesome man. Wishing you the best.

 

[Englewoodcowboy]

That's awesome news. One of the lakes I boat on has experienced a leak at the dam due to a sinkhole. The TVA is working on it and have the level well below winter lows. There are 5 nuclear plants down stream so they are being overly cautious. They cannot seem to locate the source of the leak and people are starting to worry about this coming years water activities. The worst part is the TVA keeps saying they are being cautious and working on it but off the record, with no cause yet discovered that means there is no repair planned or completion date. Could be bad for s lot of boats that are on lifts etc that cannot be recovered to use at one of the other nearby lakes...