(KTXL) — California’s second-largest reservoir has reached total capacity after a historical year for snowfall, with a large snowpack still left in the Sierra Nevada, according to the California Department of Water Resources.
In a dramatic transformation, Lake Oroville has gone from a lake elevation of around 782 feet at the start of June 2022 to its maximum height of nearly 900 feet on Friday.
This is the first time since February 2017 that Lake Oroville has reached or exceeded its total capacity.
It is the first since June and July of 2019 that the like has seen a summertime capacity of nearly 100 percent.
As of Friday, Lake Oroville is storing about 3.52 million-acre-feet-of-water (AF) behind Oroville Dam. The main spillway continues releasing water into the Feather River to allow for continued storage space.
In a report from the CADWR on Friday, they said that the lake’s current level may cause splashing over the walls of the emergency spillway on windy days, but they will be monitoring lake spillway conditions.
“While unlikely, DWR will be monitoring for the potential of any wave runup that might splash over the crest of the emergency spillway,” the DWR wrote in the report. “Wave splash will not affect the integrity of the emergency spillway structure or Oroville Dam.”
California’s largest reservoir, Lake Shasta is nearing total capacity with levels around 97 percent as of Friday.
Lake Shasta is currently holding around 4.4 million AF of water of its total 4.552 million AF capacity. Since June 2022, the lake has gained nearly 3 million AF of water.
Numerous other lakes around the state are seeing record historical average highs and are between 70 and 90 percent of their total capacities.