Anybody know how the water is doing? ... Smitty?
How's Bishop Canyon and the lakes lookin for the season?
Anybody know how the water is doing? ... Smitty?
I think it would be way too early to tell in general but interested in the South lake situation. Since there has been no improvement from last season water wise I'm afraid the same lack of water will affect South Lake again this year.
Hope and pray for the best.
What he said.Originally Posted by seal
So far the recorded snow pack further South (Bishop Drainage) is about 12% of what it should be. One of the meteorologists said that it would take snow/precip every day until the end of May to even recover to what a "Normal" year might be.
South Lake, Sabrina and the Bishop Creek drainage will be memories. Bridgeport reservoir and the East Walker will be disasters. The last big storm over a week ago only put 2+ feet of snow at Mammoth Mountain, only rain at the town of Mammoth and NOTHING in Long Valley or south of Mammoth. And Lake Crowley is ice free and Hot Creek and the Upper Owens rivers have very low flows. My guide that lives in Bishop is really worried about what the future for the area fishing is going to be. And the Western side of the Sierras is no better off, scary indeed.
I was up in the area in mid January. Good fishing in the Owens one day but the water was low and just a spec of white in the mountains that are normally covered this time of the year. Scary stuff
We need a March Miracle. EVERYBODY think good thoughts for WATER.
I spent 15 minutes typing a very thorough response and accidentally erased it. Crap! So...I'm gonna retype a shorter response.
The long and short of it is that the entire state is in a major drought. Statewide precip is on pace to match the worst ever (1977) and snowpack is nearly at the lowest on record (during WWII). This is not good for reservoirs statewide and naturally both Lake Sabrina and South Lake are no exception. I'm not expecting much out of South Lake this year but Sabrina could be workable if the rest of the winter is decent.....
I received the runoff forecast from SCE last week and the Bishop Creek runoff forecast is 41% of normal....and that assumes a normal rest of February and March.
-I can say both forks of the creek were flowing at fishable levels yesterday and given the fact that it's still cold in the high country with well below freezing nights, that bodes very well for the upcoming season as this should be about as low as the flows can get with the current drought. A lot of folks don't realize how much spring water comes down the mountain in our canyon, plus the glacial melt that fortunately 2 winters weren't able to decimate completely.
-I don't expect anything out of South Lake this year except a handful of holdovers. We certainly do not plan on putting the boats in unless we get a monster March & April. We did crazy things to get them in last year and it just wasn't worth the trouble.
-Sabrina could certainly be workable if we have a decent rest of the season. It only takes an 85% winter to spill that lake which leads me to think that if we can get to 50% of normal, it could come up high enough to at least float some boats and stock some fish. That's just a guess but I think it's a reasonable one. Incidentally, Sabrina is apparently 70% ice free as of yesterday...crazy.
-Intake II is still frozen and looks to be pretty much at the normal level. I don't think there's enough storage in Intake II for them to drain that thing, especially given it's popularity as a camping and fishing spot.
-North Lake will be fine - thankfully DWP can't rape that body of water.
In a nutshell - it looks to be another season like last season.....there will be places to fish, but it won't be the normal situation at all. One thing thing that gives me a bit of solace is that these conditions have happened before and we're still here. People still come to the Eastern Sierra in droves for camping, fishing, hiking and whatever else they like to do...and drought or no drought, they will continue to do so. That doesn't mean we aren't busy doing the rain dance of course hahaha.
Just for fun - here are a couple interesting photos from looooooong ago when a similar drought was upon us (early 1920's).
Notice how similar to 2013 the water level was at South Lake in this picture...
And anyone who hit the Bishop Pass area this last summer recognizes a similarly dismal amount of July snowpack and the diminished Gilbert Glacier (right patch of snow)
This is the only picture I have that is pretty scary - this would take well more than 3 bad winters, Long Lake behind South Lake is down probably 4 ft or more....the creek above Long would basically have to dry up for a couple seasons for that to happen. That is the 10 year drought scenario we're hoping to avoid.
Peace,
Smitty
Last edited by Sierra_Smitty; 02-19-2014 at 03:28 PM.
Thanks, Jared, for a level-headed, albeit bleak, synopsis of the conditions. Love the old photos. Looking at the backgrounds you can see just how little things have changed in the last 90 years. Water was scarce then and it's scarce now, but snow and rain came back then and it will come back this time. Conserve what's there and protect the resources (like your amazing canyon), but don't do anything crazy (like keeping people out) to fix something that's really not broken.
Miracle March is coming...
Starting off on the right foot
You may be right about a March Miracle. The storm coming on February 28 and March 1 looks to be a dumper. Let's hope it continues throughout the month.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
