215 billion gallons of water has poured into Shasta Lake since Feb. 1

Shasta Lake Top: 2015 amid drought conditions. Bottom: 2017 amid a wet rain season. Shasta Lake Top: 2015 amid drought conditions. Bottom: 2017 amid a wet rain season. Photo: Top, Paul Hames, DWR Photography. Bottom, Instagram Photo By Julian Glukhenko. Photo: Top, Paul Hames, DWR Photography. Bottom, Instagram Photo By Julian Glukhenko. Image 1 of / 24 Caption Close 215 billion gallons of water has poured into Shasta Lake since Feb. 1 1 / 24 Back to Gallery

As a series of moisture-packed storms drench Northern California this year, Lake Shasta is seeing an impressive turnaround from near record lows.

California's largest reservoir has received some 215 billion gallons of water since Feb. 1 and as a result the lake level rose 25 feet since the start of the month, as of Friday. To put that in perspective, the San Francisco Public Utility Commission says the entire Hetch Hetchy Reservoir "can store up to 117 billion gallons of drinking water."

Over 24 hours this week alone (Feb. 8 to 9), Shasta's water level shot up eight feet.

Dramatic lake level rises are common in this rainy season marked by moisture-packed weather systems known as atmospheric rivers.

Folsom Lake east of Sacramento rose roughly 33 feet over the three days this week, while Lake Oroville went up 44 feet since February 1.

But for a reservoir the size of Shasta's — you could put four Folsom Lakes in Shasta and still not fill it — a 25-foot increase requires substantially more water, as reported previously in SFGATE.

This is great news for a lake that flirted with record-low levels over the past five years of drought.

The lake is currently at 92 percent capacity, and at the same time last year, when weak El Niño storms brought less rain and snow than predicted, it was at 55 percent capacity.

Shasta registered its lowest elevation level ever, 837 feet above sea level, in 1977. In December 2014, the lake dipped down to 889 feet.

On Feb. 9, the lake level was 1,055 feet.

Louis Moore, a deputy public affairs officer with the Bureau of Reclamation, says the February storms bringing with them billions of gallons of water have been especially helpful in filling the lake.

"We've had tremendous precipitation coming through the area over the past couple days," Moore said. "The runoff area above Shasta Lake is quite large and and it seems like the storm might have been lined up right on that area."

Moore added: "We're coming out of our fifth year of drought and going into our sixth year and we're still working on moving out of the drought. This is a good turnaround and now we get to look at all of this water to see what we can do with it."