The Bay Area's drying reservoirs got much-needed rain from a powerful storm that drenched Northern California this week.
The Santa Clara Valley Water District said the recent storm, which caused pockets of flooding in many cities and roadways, shows how severe California's drought conditions have become.
A look at Lexington Reservoir in the South Bay a few weeks ago and compared to after this week's storm shows an obvious visual improvement.
Water officials said updated figures Friday night show South Bay reservoirs gained almost 6,000-acre feet -- or about a 3 to 4 percent jump in total storage.
"We were expecting more," said Aaron Baker, Raw Water Operations director. "We were expecting more on the order of 10,000-acre feet, but the upper watersheds are so dry and the storm didn't produce quite the amount of rainfall that we were hoping for."
Chesbro Reservoir in September was declared officially empty. On Friday, water levels at the reservoir had climbed up to about 4 percent.
"The level of Chesbro was so low it was actually below the instruments that we use to measure the reservoir," Baker said. "We received enough inflow -- about 300-to-400 acre feet that it's now registering on our instruments. So it's good to see something go from 'nothing' to a little bit."
