Local lakes rising as winter storms continue

Jan. 5—Reservoir levels in Talent Irrigation District have nearly doubled since Christmas Eve, but they're still only about 11% full

No single "atmospheric river" of snow and rain will wash away the region's water woes, but a string of them now flowing through Southern Oregon is making waves toward reaching those goals.

The holiday stream of precipitation almost doubled the water levels in eastern Jackson County reservoirs and bloated the area's largest reservoir — Lost Creek Lake — to just a few feet shy of its normal filling schedule, water data shows.

That puts the reservoir responsible for aiding the Rogue River's wild salmon at 32 feet higher than this time last year, with 82,000 acre-feet more water than in early January 2022, according to U.S. Army Corps of Engineers records.

That alone is more water than needed to completely fill Hyatt and Howard Prairie reservoirs in the High Cascades east of Ashland.

"That's a massive amount of water," said Pete Samarin, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist who helps mete out Lost Creek water to benefit migrating and spawning Rogue salmon each spring through fall.

"I think it's an excellent start to the water year," Samarin said.

That optimism is more tempered at Talent Irrigation District, where its three-headed water system of Hyatt, Howard Prairie and Emigrant reservoirs are attempting to recharge after last year's record low levels.

Water levels are improving, but there's still a long way to go, TID Manager Wanda Derry said.

Emigrant Lake was listed Wednesday at 11% full, Hyatt was 9% full and Howard Prairie was 12% full.

The most recent storm added 6,012 acre-feet of water — enough to put 6,012 acres of land under 1 foot of water — into the reservoirs from Christmas Eve into Wednesday morning, Derry said.

That puts the current storage level at 12,565 acre-feet, or 11% of capacity, she said. That's still almost three times more than at the same time last year, records show.

For a full irrigation season, TID needs the three reservoirs to start the irrigation season containing at least 50,000 acre-feet of water, Derry said. The last time that happened was in 2018, when the reservoirs started at 54% of capacity, she said.

It's a slightly different story at Applegate Lake, where the reservoir was listed Thursday at 20% full and actually dropping as the Corps was releasing about twice the amount of water that was flowing into the reservoir.

Unlike the Jan. 1 start of the official filling season at Lost Creek Lake, the Corps doesn't begin filling Applegate Lake until Feb. 1 to ensure enough space to capture midwinter flood events in the historically flashy Applegate Basin.

Meanwhile, the Rogue and Umpqua basins collectively are now sporting snowpack measured at 105% of average.

"While that's the lowest number in the state, it's not a laughable number," Samarin said.

And those numbers are expected to gain ground through the next week as another series of meteorological phenomena called "atmospheric rivers" again descend upon Southern Oregon and Northern California.

An atmospheric river is the meteorological term for weather systems that collect large amounts of precipitation over the Pacific Ocean and concentrate it into a narrow corridor. In these cases, the corridors run straight into Northern California and Central Oregon.

National Weather Service forecasts predict the next atmospheric river will dump 1 foot to 2 feet of snow in the Southern Oregon Cascades and Siskiyou Mountains above 5,000 feet.

The brunt of the storm is set to hit Northern California, with up to 4 feet of snow forecast for Mount Shasta and high-elevation areas of Siskiyou County, according to the weather service.

"California is getting hit real hard, but it tapers off as you go north," said weather service meteorologist Brian Nieuwenhuis in Medford. "But it's still not too shabby."

Because of the tight corridorlike nature of these storms, it's not uncommon for Southern Oregon to be just off the edge of such atmospheric rivers. And that has Derry and other reservoir watchers hoping for a slight deviation in this next river's path.

"We keep hoping they come this way, but you never really know," Derry said.

Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 541-776-4470 or email him at mfreeman@rosebudmedia.com.