It was just one of those little pieces of information that kept bugging me for an explanation.

I’ve kept a tab open with the major California reservoir levels listed and with all our storms, found myself checking it every morning: the drought was boring but the anti-drought is shiny and new, I guess? And hopeful.

While Trinity…just sits there. It’s finally gotten up to 51% of normal, as if it were determined to hold onto the essence of droughtiness to remind us not to ever waste a drop. There are a few other reservoirs that are just shy of normal, but they’re all in the southern end of the state while Trinity’s well to the north and really, how on earth could it say it’s half what it should be, much less so far from full after all these storms?

Surely at least the mountains surrounding it will make up for it when things melt, given the 237% of normal snowpack.

And that of course is it. Although it still doesn’t satisfy my sense that it should look better on paper by now. But it will supply plenty of water to the Central Valley farmers over the summer, and that’s the relief that all my staring at that graph had been searching for all along.