Wednesday January 4, 2023
Redding Record Searchlight —
While all the rain that fell in December helped raise the level of a parched-looking Lake Shasta, the series of winter storms failed to generate the massive inflows of water into the state’s largest reservoir.
That’s expected to change over the next 10 days as a series of wet storms moves through the region, dropping several inches of rain, which has prompted the National Weather Service to issue a flood watch for Wednesday and Thursday in Shasta County.
“This next system that moves through is going to hit Shasta hard,” Don Bader, area manager of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, said Tuesday morning. “We’re probably looking at 40 or 50 feet of the lake coming up.”
The Bureau of Reclamation operates Lake Shasta and Trinity Lake. The two reservoirs hold water that is used to supply numerous local water agencies, including the cities of Redding and Shasta Lake, Bella Vista Water District and other smaller water districts in the Redding area.
As of Tuesday, Lake Shasta was 34% full and 57% of normal for this time of year.