Scenario panel

Two model studies, each labeled, each on its own axis. The first asks what allocation DWR’s own CalSim3 rule set would have implied from the water in storage each February, beside what was announced. The second asks how each COEQWAL strategy moves Delta exports, deliveries, storage, and salinity against current operations across 100 modeled years.

Every figure on this page is model output under idealized rules. It is not a measurement, a forecast, or a prediction, and no modeled series here shares an axis with Dayflow, CDEC, or an announced allocation. Where the two appear together, they sit in separate charts with the same years underneath.
Modeled: DWR CalSim3, Final DCR 2023What the rule set implied from February storage
For each water year, the May allocation that the DCR 2023 rule set produced in the twelve modeled years whose end-of-February storage at Shasta, Oroville, Folsom, Trinity, and San Luis most resembled that year’s (median, with the 10th to 90th percentile band). Announced allocations sit in the separate chart below on the same years.
10th to 90th percentile of analog years (modeled)median implied allocation (modeled)
Observed: announced allocationWhat Reclamation or DWR announced
Final allocation for the year and class, from the announcements. Same years as the chart above; a different record, so a different chart. Years without an announcement in this table (CVP classes before 2011) are left blank.
Hover a year in either chart for its figures.
Table: implied band, announced, and the gap (text twin)
Modeled: COEQWAL scenario libraryHow each strategy compares with current operations
Table: mean, range, and difference from current operations for every strategy (text twin)

Related: Allocation history (the announced record) Reservoir storage position (observed storage against its own record) Delta diversions (Dayflow)

Sources. California Department of Water Resources, Final Delivery Capability Report 2023, CalSim3 run 9.3.1_danube_adj (CNRA open data; decision variables for water years 1922 through 2021 on the historical hydrology sequence, climate-adjusted), held on this site as calsim3_dcr2023_dv and summarized in calsim3_allocation_expectation (rebuilt with build_ops_comparison.py). COEQWAL scenario library (Collaboratory for Equity in Water Allocation, University of California, Berkeley and partners; coeqwal.org), 140 scenarios of 28 strategies under five hydroclimates, held on this site as coeqwal_series and summarized in coeqwal_delta_strategy_summary. Announced allocations: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (CVP, 2011 onward) and DWR Historical Table A Allocations (SWP, 1996 onward).

Method. The implied allocation is an analog screen: for each observed February, the twelve modeled years nearest in end-of-February storage at five reservoirs are found in the DCR 2023 run and the May allocation the rule set produced in those years is read off (median and 10th to 90th percentile). It describes the rule set, not the operators; the gap between it and the announcement has stayed inside a band of roughly plus or minus twenty points across the record and shows no trend. The COEQWAL panel shows derived statistics only (the mean and the 10th to 90th percentile of the annual value over the 100 modeled years, and the difference of the mean from the current-operations run under the same hydroclimate, sibling group s0020); no annual series is republished. Reintroduction twins (codes ending in R) share the CalSim3 run with their base strategy and are folded into it. COEQWAL states that its library does not rank strategies; neither does this panel. COEQWAL’s current-operations run is not the DWR DCR 2023 run: the two share operating logic and hydrology but differ in groundwater constraints, so a baseline figure is attributed to whichever study produced it. Full rules: definitions .

Screening and orientation aids that precede engineering and operations analysis. conciseVerbosity is an independent personal project; the views and tools here are separate from the organizations I serve.