Why is Lookout Point Reservoir almost empty, while Dexter Reservoir is nearly overflowing?

[Those Who Squirm]

Originally Posted by Erock23175

This is incorrect. This area has been receiving lower than normal rainfall for a decade or so. I don't know who, but "someone" redefined our reservoirs as being "flood control" about 2 decades ago. Ever since, the Army Corps of Engineers has refused to treat the reservoirs as functioning biospheres/fisheries, and maintain the water-levels thusly.

I've been visiting this area annually since the early 70s, and have lived here since 95. Every year, we've had more than enough water flowing down the Upper Willamette to fill all of the lakes on the chain to full-pool, and have them full until late fall. Given the lower rainfall, increased aridity, and the increase in population here in Oregon, one would think a much higher focus would be placed on taking the most advantage of the utility our lakes provide.

Instead it's being squandered, supposedly in pursuit of facilitating the improvement of our salmonid runs. To date, this change in policy has harmed the state, by degrading our recreation, and tourism opportunities/resources, and worse, it has demonstrably failed to achieve any substantial improvement.

From what I read the salmon run around late summer/early fall, which is usually just before the rainy season starts, so if they have to pick a time to draw down the reservoirs, that would be the optimal time with regard to water storage. Still, I'd be lying if I said it didn't worry me. The past few years have been so dry, and it seems now as if the upper Willamette Valley has become the epicenter of the decades long megadrought which has easing up elsewhere. Our YTD precipitation in Eugene is about 63 percent of normal*, and we just might break 30 inches by year's end.

*"Normal" for the entire year is 40.83 inches, based on NOAA's 30 year dataset ending in 2020. However, annual average rainfall for the last 15 years of that period was only 36.58. I don't know where to find the data for individual years, but if you do a little algebra using these given figures, you find that the average for the first fifteen years of the period was around 45 inches, almost as much as the average for the thirty years ending in 2010. We can infer from this a state of steady decline beginning as early as 1990, and this seems to be continuing into the 2020s.

[Those Who Squirm]

Forgot to say in my previous post: Figures are from the airport weather station.

[Those Who Squirm]

Despite the recent rain and higher than average precipitation for last month, we are now in extreme drought. But I guess we don't need the reserve supply of water that the reservoirs used to provide.