Monday February 13, 2023
NASA Earth Observatory —
From late December 2022 into January 2023, a series of damaging storms delivered a tremendous amount of precipitation to California, helping to replenish mountain snowpack and reservoirs. Still, the abundance of water is unlikely to reverse the region’s decades-long decline in groundwater.
The images above and below show the two largest reservoirs in California—Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville—before and after the winter storms. They were acquired in November 2022 (left) and in late January 2023 (right) by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8 and the OLI-2 on Landsat 9.
As of January 29 (top-right) Shasta stood at 56 percent of capacity, or about 87 percent of the historical average for the time of year, according to the California Department of Water Resources. That’s up from 31 percent of capacity on November 19 (top-left). As of January 30 (below-right), Lake Oroville stood at 64 percent of capacity, or about 111 percent of the historical average for the time of year. That’s up from 28 percent of capacity on November 19 (below-left).
Notice the tan fringes around the lakes in the November images. This is where calcium carbonate and other mineral compounds have attached to the sandstone during past instances of higher water levels. By late January, much of these “bathtub rings” were underwater again.