Lake Oroville in Oroville, California, on September 05, 2021 (left), and on April 16, 2023 (right).
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
California’s record-setting rain and snow this winter has replenished the state’s reservoirs.Photos showed the dramatic transformation at Lake Oroville, the second-largest reservoir.Some lakes, like Tulare Lake in the Central Valley, have also re-emerged after being drained years ago.
Dramatic photos show how heavy rain and snow helped replenish drought-stricken California, with some reservoirs and lakes currently at their highest levels in years.
California saw record levels of rain and snowpack this winter. As a result, Lake Shasta and Lake Oroville, two of the largest reservoirs in the state, bounced back from dangerously low levels last year to now being near full capacity. All together, reservoirs statewide are currently 86% full, well above the 30-year average of 66% and up from closer to 35% late last year, according data compiled by the Los Angeles Times.
Photos of Lake Oroville taken in September of 2021 and April of 2023 showed the stark transformation.
The first photo below, taken in 2021, shows a view of the reservoir that includes the Enterprise Bridge above hills of dry land and only a small stream of water flowing underneath. The second photo, taken this year, shows the water flowing beneath the bridge has swelled, forming a long, wide section of water over what was previously just more land.
The Enterprise Bridge at Lake Oroville in Oroville, California on September 05, 2021 (top), and on April 16, 2023 (below).
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
The extra water has helped relieve drought conditions in much of the state, even making it so farmers in the state’s Central Valley do not have to rely on groundwater to irrigate their crop.
“It’s been a wild year,” David “Mas” Masumoto, a Fresno County farmer and author, told The Washington Post. “We forget, November and December, it looked like another drought. We all braced for that and planned for that.”
Photos of another section of Lake Oroville showed houseboats in a line along a thin section of water on September 04, 2021 (top), and again on on April 16, 2023 (below) at the same spot but with a wide girth on either side due to the expansion of the lake.
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
Instead of pumping groundwater, which can further deplete water resources by draining rivers and lakes, farmers have been able to rely on canals and irrigation ditches that have finally been full of water.
The Post reported it’s the first time in a decade that farmers have actually been able to pump water back into aquifers, rather than pull it out.
Houseboats parked at a marina at Lake Oroville in Oroville, California, on September 05, 2021 (top) and on April 16, 2023 (below).
Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images
The high levels of precipitation have even brought some “zombie lakes” back to life.
Tulare Lake, located in the Central Valley, was once the largest body of fresh water west of the Mississippi. About a century ago its water was diverted to irrigate farms, and the lake was largely drained.
Heavy equipment reinforces levees in preparation of possible flooding as farmland in the Tulare Lake Basin is submerged in water in Corcoran, Calif., Thursday, April 20, 2023.
Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
But Tulare Lake re-emerged earlier this year, leaving some of the farms that stood on the land just last year now under water.
Scientists have said the cycle of dry years mixed in with extremely wet ones like this year — which also led to damaging floods and landslides — could become more normal.
Farmland in the Tulare Lake Basin is submerged in water in Corcoran, Calif., April 20, 2023.
Jae C. Hong, File/Associated Press