Lodi sees first signs of the rainy season
Just after midnight on Friday Lodi had its first precipitation of the rainy season and according to Ken Clark, a meteorologist with private weather forecaster AccuWeather.com, that will be the only rainfall the area will see for a while.
“I don’t see any rain coming again for at least the next 10 to 12 days,” Clark said. “A cold front came in from up in Oregon yesterday and brought us a few showers.”
Much warmer temperatures along with very dry conditions are on the horizon, Clark said. Temperatures are expected to range between the mid to upper 80s to the low 90s across the area, and with the dry air conditions there is a risk for fire danger.
“Yes we had rain. It probably wasn’t a lot of rain. It probably did not help the current fire situation as much as the cooler temperatures and the higher humidity did,” Clark said.
Clark estimated that Friday’s rainfall was less than a quarter of an inch, and added that normal precipitation for the month of October is 1 ⁄2 inches. Clark anticipates that this year’s rainy season will be very warm and there will be less precipitation than normal, unlike last winter.
According to Jenesse Miller, a spokesperson at East Bay Municipal Utility District, the recent rainfall had very little impact on water levels at Lake Camanche. Miller said the water level at the reservoir was at 219.18 feet and the reservoir is 73 percent full, which is normal for this time of year.
The district’s flood control requirements kick in on Nov. 5 and, in anticipation of that, EBMUD had been lowering water levels to make space for the anticipated winter storms, Miller said.
“Certainly after the several years of drought we’re in a great position,” Miller said. “We don’t have a crystal ball, so we don’t know what kind of year it’s going to be quite yet but even if it’s a dry year we’ll have adequate supply. As in every year we’re hoping for a good, solid rainy season.”
According to San Joaquin County Emergency Services Director Mike Cockrell, the county held its pre-flood season briefing with local levee agencies, cities, emergency responders, the weather service and Army Corps of Engineers Friday afternoon to discuss the status of the county’s levees.
“One of the concerns is because we were in high water all the way into August, that the inspectors didn’t get a chance to evaluate early enough and be able to start making all the repairs and rehab the levees before the season begins,” Cockrell said.
The state is recommending that the levee agencies try to winterize levees now so that they can handle some rains, Cockrell said.
“All the engineers are working on the levees as much as they can,” he said. “They know that we will be going into this rainy season with levees that were hit pretty hard. The good thing about it is that we only had one failure so they actually held up really well.”
In regards to the water quality of the runoff from last night’s rainfall, Lodi Watershed Program Coordinator Kathy Grant said it was much cleaner than last year. Every year Grant collects a sample of the runoff from the first rainfall of the season.
“It’s cleaner than last year’s just from looking at it. There is still a lot of sediment in it,” Grant said. “Last year it was really bad. You would leave the bottle of water standing for weeks and it would still not settle out.”