Turlock Irrigation District officials are pleased that a series of welcome storms will boost the water picture going into summer.
About a half inch of rain fell in the Ceres area on Sunday, followed by more rain yesterday.
“I think those numbers will be ticking up pretty quickly over the next coming days,” TID Water & Power Resource Planning Department Manager Olivia Cramer told the board of directors Tuesday morning.
“So although we went through almost that five-week period of not seeing any precipitation, it was helpful that we had gone into it well above normal conditions from the end of December, going into the beginning of January storms that put us above average.”
Cramer noted that TID doesn’t need much catch up to get back to normal conditions.
She said more storms are expected throughout the week and next week. Forecasts have the area getting .4 inches to .5 inches on Feb. 22 and 24.
This week’s storms being from a colder front has resulted in freezing temperatures at a higher level in the Tuolumne watershed which will help “to build that snow pack, so we won’t see an immediate runoff response from the system, because of that snow pack accumulation,” said Cramer.
Next week’s storms are also expected to be warmer, she noted.
Don Pedro Reservoir, TID’s main storage lake, presents a “very different story than what we were looking at just two weeks ago,” Cramer said.
The lake has encroached into the flood control level of 801.9 feet by approximately 11,000 acre-feet. That has prompted TID to work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to increase releases from the current 2,000 cubic feet per second to possibly 4,000 CFS by the end of the 16-day projection. Cramer noted that the reservoir is anticipating a peak of 70,000 acre-feet encroachment into the flood control zone and releasing more water will be necessary to pull that level down.
“There’s a purpose to the flood control space for these types of events where you do get this runoff all of a sudden. We know that we’re not gonna use all of the space and so that’s where they’re comfortable with us not being at full channel capacity.”
The maximum storage in the dedicated flood control space is 340,000 acre-feet.
Cramer said farmers within the district will likely be entitled to 48 inches of irrigation water per acre in the coming season.
“It’s very exciting to have four years in a row of 48 inches. It’s definitely not something we’ve seen in the last couple decades with climate change and the amount of variability we’ve seen year to year.”
TID Director of Water Operations Wes Miller said the healthy rainfall season should mean a March 12 start to irrigation which would extend 231 days until Oct. 28, similar to last year.
“Our growers can order 24 hours a day seven days a week online at waterrequest.tid.org,” said Miller.
The water call center hours will be weekdays 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. with currently the first day to order on March 11 and last day to order would be Oct. 23.
