This year has brought the best that water managers could imagine — an abundant snowpack and a manageable melt.
Rivers mostly have stayed within their banks as they carried the runoff from the Sierra Nevada to farms and cities in the Central Valley and beyond.
"Things could have gone wrong, but they went pretty well," Maury Roos, chief hydrologist for the California Department of Water Resources, said Wednesday.
The central Sierra snowpack was 163 percent of average as of April 1, the department reported. Officials warned at the time that a warm spring could speed up the melt and cause flooding.
Several people lost their lives in river accidents, including three hikers from the Northern San Joaquin Valley who were swept over Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park last month.
But property damage has been light, thanks to the flood-control system and below-average temperatures that slowed the melt.
Minor flooding happened along the San Joaquin River near Newman, as well as along the Merced River in Yosemite Valley.
The Tuolumne River rose to just a few feet below homes near the Ninth Street bridge in Modesto, as water was released from Don Pedro Reservoir upstream to make room for the mountain runoff. The high flows went on for weeks during spring, but without problems.
Roos said coordinated reservoir releases around the Sierra helped assure that the runoff would get down the rivers safely.
"If it had been a hot early summer, that would have caused problems," he said.
Most of the state's major reservoirs are at least 90 percent full, a big change from the 2007-09 drought.
Don Pedro peaked near its capacity of 2.03 million acre-feet in mid-July and has been at about 1.9 million this week.
"That's beneficial because if 2012 is dry, water is already in storage," said Herb Smart, spokesman for the Turlock Irrigation District, which shares the reservoir with the Modesto Irrigation District.
Some of the snowmelt is still making its way into Don Pedro, which is uncommon for this late in summer, he said. He added that the extra water means more cheap hydropower than usual for electricity customers.
New Melones Reservoir on the Stanislaus River has often been well below capacity because of droughts and releases to benefit downstream fish habitat. This year, it's close to the top, providing plenty of water surface for boaters and anglers.
"It's definitely been great for business," said Nicole Benge, who works at New Melones Lake Marina. "We have had a lot of people who haven't been here for a while."
The wet weather this year and last has boosted the groundwater supply as well, Roos said.
The heavy storms did cause other problems, including major power disruptions in Tuolumne County and a battered cherry crop in the valley. But overall, the sight of near-full reservoirs in late summer is welcome in a drought-prone state.
"The carry-over (to 2012) is going to be as good as it ever gets," Roos said.
Bee staff writer John Holland can be reached at jholland@modbee.com or (209) 578-2385.
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