Gilroy
– After a dry start to the winter season, Mother Nature has been
playing a bit of catch-up during the past week.
Gilroy – After a dry start to the winter season, Mother Nature has been playing a bit of catch-up during the past week.
Gilroy has received 1.31 inches of rain – about one-sixteenth of the average yearly total – since Thursday.
Despite the recent downpours, Gilroy has still experienced a relatively dry winter. While the area has seen 8.95 inches since the start of the season on July 1, 2006, 11.93 inches of rain fell during the same period in 2005-06. The official rainy season runs from July 1 to June 30.
The recent surge of precipitation has boosted levels at some local reservoirs. From Feb. 12 to Feb. 26, Coyote Reservoir rose 544 acre-feet to 5,043 acre-feet-a 12 percent gain-while Uvas Reservoir rose 448 acre-feet to 1,227 acre-feet-a 37 percent gain. An acre-foot of water is enough to cover an acre of land to a depth of one floor and is about the amount of water a family of four will use in a year.
The gains could not have come at a more opportune time, said Candice Kwok-Smith, spokeswoman for the Santa Clara Valley Water District.
“Particularly for the Uvas Reservoir,” she added. “Several weeks ago, it was at only 3 percent (of capacity). We were going to potentially have to rescue those fish – particularly the steelhead trout. Now, with the rain, it looks like they’ll be fine. We don’t even anticipate we’ll have to move them.”
Despite the gains, some reservoirs remain at low levels, with Coyote Reservoir at only 21.7 percent capacity and Uvas Reservoir only 12.5 percent full.
Anderson and Chesbro reservoirs, which both lost water in the past two weeks despite the storms, are at 73.8 percent and 17.0 percent capacity, respectively.
Low reservoir levels are not a concern yet, Kwok-Smith said.
“We still have until April, so we’ve still got a few more months of rain,” she said.
Rain will continue through Thursday, then clear into partly cloudy skies through Sunday, the National Weather Service reported.
While residents might be tired of the soggy weather, the chilly storm could provide a dusting of snow on surrounding foothills above 1,500 feet.
