Drought

California's Folsom Lake Reaches Record Low Level Due to Drought

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The images in this slideshow give us a look at a historically low Folsom Lake, located northeast of Sacramento, California, on Sept. 17, 2015. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

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The images in this slideshow give us a look at a historically low Folsom Lake, located northeast of Sacramento, California, on Sept. 17, 2015. (MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Snowpack in the Sierras might be surging ahead of what's normal for this time of year, but you wouldn't know it by looking at the lakes and reservoirs of California.

Folsom Lake, a reservoir just northeast of Sacramento that supplies some 200,000 Californians with drinking water, reached its lowest level ever recorded on Sunday, according to CBS Sacramento. The lake level of 140,410 acre-feet dipped below the November 1977 level of 140,600 acre-feet to break the record, the report said.

Despite the promises of an above-average snowpack, central California needs rain in the short-term to help resuscitate the dying lakes before the snowmelt arrives next spring.

(MORE: The Impact of El Niño on Seasonal Snowfall)

"We may have a very wet winter, but if we don't have dramatic snowfall and so forth – we've got to still be conscious we're still living through this drought," U.S. Rep. Ami Bera, D-Elk Grove, told CBS Sacramento during a recent tour of the lake.

This new record wasn't all that surprising to experts who have studied California's long-term drought; they predicted it would happen this fall, the Sacramento Bee said.

The new record low has put pressure on officials to speed up the approval process of a new reservoir, the Sites Reservoir in Colusa County, which would be twice as large as Folsom Lake. But that will take six to eight years to develop, CBS Sacramento also reported, and the proposed project doesn't come without opposition. Environmental groups worry that the project could kill a lot of fish, the report added.

For now, the state will continue to rely on water-saving methods to fight the drought. Gov. Jerry Brown said mandatory water cutbacks will remain in place through Halloween of next year if there isn't a huge reduction of the drought in the next two months, according to a separate Sacramento Bee report. The state has ordered Sacramento to cut its water usage by 28 percent.

“We’ll do the best that we can, and I’m confident the residents will rise to the occasion,” city utilities director Bill Busath told the Sacramento Bee.