Trinity has a really small area above the dam for drainage.” Bader said.īut Trinity Lake won’t get as much melt water this June as some other California reservoirs that rely on snowmelt, according to Bader. You go over Buckhorn Mountain, the big divider between both dams. “It’s harder to refill Trinity in one season. That means Trinity fills more slowly throughout the year as mountain snow melts, he said. While Trinity Lake is a large reservoir, it has a very small basin. The good news is Trinity Lake “got more water and snowmelt this past year than we did in the previous three years combined,” he said.Īnother reason water levels differ is the way the two reservoirs fill up, Bader said. Those years of drought taxed the reservoir’s storage, so it started the year low, Bader said.
Its last “good year” ― one when the water level reached its historic average ― was 2019. Trinity Lake had the worst consecutive three years of drought on record for that reservoir. There are three reasons why Trinity didn’t fill the way Shasta did this winter, he said. That means its water level sits 120 feet below the top of the dam, Bader said. We’re going to creep up as close as we can to the top, but we’re not going to go over,” he said.īut 40 miles northwest of Redding, Trinity Lake is only 39% full: 49% of its historic average. “We don’t want to get totally full,” and there’s still water coming into the lake from this week's rains. “We cranked the releases up,” letting more water out through the dam because of the storms this week and last weekend, Bader said on Tuesday. The water level at the dam is lapping a little more than three feet from the top, Bureau of Reclamation Area Manager Donald Bader said. Winter rainstorms filled Lake Shasta to 98% of its capacity, 116% of its historic average for this time of year, according to the California Department of Water Resources. There are several reasons why that happened this year, according to the Bureau of Reclamation, and why the situation at Trinity Dam may not be as dire as it sounds. While Lake Shasta is brimming with water, Trinity Lake is less than half full. The water level at Lake Shasta was higher than it has been in many years on May 2, 2023.
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