Has the December Rain Impacted Our Lakes?

Some parts of San Diego County have seen four times as much rain than normal for this month.

Has it made any impact on the county’s drought stricken lakes?

The deluge of rain is helpful for San Diego, but not enough, according to Jason Foster of the County Water Authority. At Lake Morena, the water lines on the rocks show it’s still too shallow.

Rain makes up very little of the water in local lakes and reservoirs, Foster said.

“We use only about 6 percent of our local demands from local surface water that’s captured here,” he said.

The find the more critical water supply is north of San Diego, in the Northern Sierra Region, which has seen 142 percent of its normal rain amount so far this season.

But that doesn’t tell the whole story. The snowfall there has been less than half of what’s normal.

“Some of the early storms that came through were really warm weather storms,” Foster said. “So we didn’t get a lot of snowpack out of it. And the snowpack really is this reservoir for California that melts off in a nice, regular pace that helps us get through the hot summer months.”

While every storm counts, it’s still an uphill climb out of the state’s drought.

“A couple of wet weeks isn’t going to do it,” Foster said. “We need a full wet winter to full break us out of this cycle.”

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