Droughts are a fact of life in California.  Here in Nevada County, most of us rely on our snowpack to meet our daily water needs.  The snowpack acts as a natural reservoir to hold winter precipitation until it later runs off as stream flow into our reservoirs.  As you will see in some of the images below, most of our reservoirs are currently full or nearly full.

Nevada Irrigation District’s website reports, “The most significant California droughts occurred in 1929-1934, 1976-1977, 1987-1992, and 2012-2016. A less severe drought occurred in 2007-2009.  The most recent drought from 2012-2016 was one of most extreme, featuring both record-high temperatures and record-low levels of snowpack and precipitation.  When drought conditions set in, water in storage dwindles, and water conservation becomes vital to stretch the supply.”

California Water Supply Outlook Report for May 2020 by the NRCS

Click here to go to the Centennial Reservoir project website