Lake Shasta

Lake Shasta slumped to near historic lows last fall after the rains almost shut off last spring, the driest on record in Northern California.
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Man I hate bad news reporting. " has not been this bad since the last time it was this bad"

If you look at the chart joe posted you can see that last spring was no where near a low for the lake. 77 was the real low. but to help I am thinking of putting a bucket out side for a hour and mailing it to Joe.
 
Tom-

Thanks for the bucket idea, but one gallon in 4,5000,000 acre feet of water storage area is just about like peeing in the ocean! Not that anyone ever does that there, or here, for that matter.......

Youze guys in the PNW and, especially, Alaska will think it trivial by numerical comparison, but I found out yesterday that of the 200 nesting pairs of Bald Eagles in California, 25 nest at Shasta Lake. I think I know where about 3/4's of their nests are, and I'm sure there are 75-100 pairs of ospreys as well, whose nests are much easier to see. We have one pair of Bald Eagles in downtown Redding next to the Sacramento River with three chicks in their nest already:
Turtle Bay Eagle Cam (Daylight hours only)

I drove by the lake yesterday on the way to Mt. Shasta, and it's looking much improved, and the weather here already has days of long pants intermittent with days best suited for shorts, t-shirts, and sandals! There's still snow on the ground above about 5,000-6,000 feet, however. Spring is coming!

Joe. :teeth :thup
 
fedex will ship 50lbs for $15. so if we start a on-line campain to fill the lake Iam sure we can get a few million folks to all fill buckets of rain water where they are and ship it to you joe. Then you can fill the lake your self.
Lets see 5 gallons per bucket times two million buckets = 10 million gallons, that should raise it a few feet.
 
Coffee break time. Let's see, for Joe the science teacher, one acre-foot equals 325,851 gallons (omitting the decimal part, it is less that .5). So Tom's 10,000,000 gallons, assuming he could actually get two million people people to FedEx Joe five gallons of water each, is about 30.7 acre-feet. And Shasta hold 4,500,000 acre-feet? So, do you really think you could tell the difference in lake level between 4,500,000 acre-feet and 4,500,030 acre-feet? 30 acre-feet is 0.00000667% of the total volume of lake water...probably more than peeing in the ocean, but not much more!
 
I'd like to point out that back on 3/10 Sea Wolf predicted that Shasta would peak out around 50 feet below full before summer drawdowns.

Well, I've been watching it periodically and a few days ago it seems to have peaked about 50.28" below full (almost a full 3.5" short of prediction).

I hope you'll all join with me in DEMANDING that Joe do a far more accurate prognostication next year. :lol:

Chris
 
I always thought joe was a few gallon short of a full glass or lake as the case may be. I dont think is draw down time just yet is it? he may still come in on target.
 
As far as he prediction goes, I just picked a reasonable rounded number guestimate, and then got lucky!

I'm not surprised that it was within 10 or 20 feet, but closer than that with two months worth of runoff, rain, drawdown, and other unknowns operating, was just pure luck.

They've actually been releasing more than the minimum amount from the lake for almost two months now, starting in mid March, with early irrigation releases. Rains have keep the inflow large enough to still raise the lake, even with the discharges. See HERE., and click on "Later" at the bottom of the page.

And I'm sure they'll plan to draw it back down to Max. -160 feet or so before the next winter, just about where we were last Fall.

What we really need is a full-bore wet winter or two to get back to normal so it will fill up during the winter, instead of part-way.

Joe. :teeth :thup
 
Joe, you're too modest. Your call was actually so good, a heavy dew would have put you right on the mark. :roll:

So what do you win? How about we double your allowance for error next year.........to 7"?

(I did go with replacing my handholds with a new set of teak ones, coated exactly 9 times. Putting them on though, was not easy as a one man job.)
Thanks for the suggestion.

Chris
 
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