Local Waters

The flood control reservoirs around the Willamette Valley are drawn down for winter to a low water depth river pond in the bottoms.

This is so they can catch the spring melt runoff of snow and the Willsmette Valley, now quite populated with houses,will not be flooded.

Its water management by the US Army Corps of Engineers

The regular winter draw down of lake depth behind the dam

also lowers the amount of electricity we can get from Hydropower  machinery at the dam.

Electricity can be made by the water wheel/ turbine turned by falling water, pulled by Gravity downwards.

a generator is turned anx makes electricity. It has magnets turning around or inside coiled wire, exciting the electrons to move, generating electricity into wires which leaves the powerhouse on high tension big wires of The Grid as AC electricity.

Around 50% of the NW electricity power is coming from dams hydroelectric generators.

The Ruralite magazine recently has a good map of all he hydroelectric dams in the NW

inside a power house at the base of the dam

Our Willamette Valley is in  winter drought ,

weirdly hardly raining in January, and today, Feb 10, it’s sunny up in the West Cascades along the North Santiam, Salems drinking water source.

Many of the wells will have a lower water table  or level of top of their availsble water, or go dry this summer.

Many a farmer will say at the farmers market,

“Now this is weird…”

And i have been here in Cascadia bioregipn for 36 years and  have never seen this mild temperature and dry a winter, as this 2026 one.

wih maybe 5 days of frost so far in the Willamette Valley.

I think it is a Global warming weather changing affect in this temperate zone of the Westerlies Winds. And hour in from thd ocean coast.