Lake Level as of 12/1/18

Lake Berryessa has started to rise! An early Christmas present? With the recent rains, the lake stabilized at 422.5 feet - 17.5 feet below Glory Hole for about a week. It hit its low point of 422.46 feet on 11/20/18. The level has now started to rise slightly, 4 inches, to 422.8 feet, 17.2 feet below Glory Hole. Historical data shows that, on average, the lake rises about 7 inches per inch of rain once the ground is saturated. It takes about 3-4 inches of rain before significant runoff occurs.

Last year at this time the lake was at 430.4 feet, 9.6 feet below Glory Hole. That was down from its high of 443.6 feet on 2/21/17 following the big rains of 47.6 inches that drove the lake to 3.6 feet ABOVE Glory Hole. This year the lake only reached 434.1 feet on 4/16/18, 5.9 feet below Glory Hole, on only 14.9 inches of rain.

It was a bit of a slow rain start this year, only .48 inches at Monticello Dam on 10/3/18 with no rain for almost a month after that - until 0.8 inches on 11/22/18. Last year the first rain was 0.21 inches on 10/20/17 and had reached 3.4 inches by 12/1/17.

We’ve now reached 5.2 inches at Monticello Dam - 1.8 inches more than this date last year. Last year was a below average rainfall year. Forecasters are predicting a wetter than normal year for 2019.