The Turlock Irrigation District board of directors voted Tuesday to set the dates for the water season and how much water will be available to growers.
The board voted 3-2 — directors Becky Arellano (Division 4) and Joe Alamo (Division 3) opposed — to establish the water season from March 20 (March 19 is the first day water can be ordered) to Oct. 29. Additionally, growers will receive 44 inches, just off the regular full allotment of 48 inches.
According to Constance Anderson, TID’s communications division manager, the board took a conservative approach with the 44-inch figure.
“Depending on what we get out of the storms that we’re anticipating, the board could come back and take another look at it,” said Anderson. “If we do get the precipitation we’re hoping for, then the board might consider offering 48 inches.”
Olivia Cramer, TID’s chief hydrologist, studied eight-day ad 16-day forecasts to determine what kind of precipitation could be expected along the 1,900-square-mile Tuolumne River Watershed.
According to Anderson, those projections include both U.S. and European models.
“But as we move into the 16-day forecast, this is where we start to see some uncertainty between the models. (Monday) we were seeing the U.S. model on the lower end around 7 inches within the watershed, and the European model on the higher end around 10 inches,” said Cramer. “And today (Tuesday) we’re almost seeing a flip flop of those models where the European is sitting around 5 inches for the 16-day, and the U.S. model is at 16 inches. They've almost switched places with each other… So, a lot of uncertainty.”
Cramer said that the benefit of the forecasted storms is that they're "nice and cold."
“So, you won’t see a huge response in runoff immediately from this storm, which is what we always like to see within the watershed,” said Cramer. “We want to build up the snowpack and get that runoff later through the summer when we have our demands coming in.”
In 2023 and 2024, the board allotted the full 48 inches of water, as was the case in 2018 and 2019. Forty-two inches was released in 2020, followed by 34 inches in 2021 and a mere 27 inches in 2022, when the drought was at its worst.
