[81alum]

Can you remind me why Trinity never got to 100% of normal once all the snow melted?  Is it just that it holds multiple years of run-off and that it was so low that even the very heavy year we had couldn't bring it back to normal?

MT I don't know the specific answer this year to your question, but I can venture an educated guess.  The Trinity Dam was designed as part of a complex that diverted the Trinity River from flowing directly to the sea to instead flow though siphon tubes over to the Sacramento watershed, where the water could enter the bigger California water project. 

But at the time the dam was built, consciousness about the environmental effects of this diversion--which in some years completely dried up the Trinity River bed--was low.  In more recent years, guarantees to the Yurok and to environmental concerns have meant that more water is released to flow down the natural channel of the Trinity River.  My guess is that given the requirement to keep water flowing down the Trinity channel, the Trinity Dam project may never be fully used again.  It was a bad dam in many respects.

Dams like Shasta that do not divert water outside their watershed don't have the same problem.  Shasta uses the Sacramento River channel for sending its water to the California project.  That water gets taken out much further downstream and thus the upper fisheries of the Sacramento River do not get dried up by the project.

[81alum]

Can you remind me why Trinity never got to 100% of normal once all the snow melted?  Is it just that it holds multiple years of run-off and that it was so low that even the very heavy year we had couldn't bring it back to normal?

MT I don't know the specific answer this year to your question, but I can venture an educated guess.  The Trinity Dam was designed as part of a complex that diverted the Trinity River from flowing directly to the sea to instead flow though siphon tubes over to the Sacramento watershed, where the water could enter the bigger California water project. 

But at the time the dam was built, consciousness about the environmental effects of this diversion--which in some years completely dried up the Trinity River bed--was low.  In more recent years, guarantees to the Yurok and to environmental concerns have meant that more water is released to flow down the natural channel of the Trinity River.  My guess is that given the requirement to keep water flowing down the Trinity channel, the Trinity Dam project may never be fully used again.  It was a bad dam in many respects.

Dams like Shasta that do not divert water outside their watershed don't have the same problem.  Shasta uses the Sacramento River channel for sending its water to the California project.  That water gets taken out much further downstream and thus the upper fisheries of the Sacramento River do not get dried up by the project.