The weekend-long deluge that dumped more than four inches of rain on some areas of Cullman County filled the region’s drinking water reservoir by nine feet in less than a three-day span.

“When I went home Friday night, Lake Catoma was at 23 feet below full,” said David Freeman, manager at the Cullman Water Treatment Plant, Monday afternoon. “When I came in to work this morning, it was at 14 and-a-half feet, and when I checked just a minute ago, it was at 14 feet even.”

The recent rains, which precipitated flood warnings on Sunday, managed to make a small dent in the area’s longstanding drought condition without creating any major problems for property owners.

“We haven’t had any reports of any problems at all,” said Cullman Emergency Management Agency Director Phyllis Little. I’m sure that we had some water over the roads at times when it was raining the heaviest. But that’s all.”

As part of a late-stage, “Phase Three” drought mitigation program, Cullman utilities customers have been under orders to restrict their water consumption to 85 percent of what they consumed this time last year.

But the weekend rainfall has sent Lake Catoma’s levels above the Phase Three threshold (and the Phase Two one, for that matter).

That’s good news to Cullman Mayor Woody Jacobs, who has been consulting with water operators, the utilities board and the city council to craft a solution to the low water levels until more moisture arrives.

“Wonderful; it was just wonderful to get all that rain,” said Jacobs. “We didn’t have any problems that were really detrimental — nothing more than some temporary street flooding — and it got our water level back up a good bit.

“By the numbers, we’ll be coming off our Phase Three restrictions, but I think that we may stay with our voluntary Phase One conservation measures,” he added.

“We chose not to enforce any of the penalties that were part of Phase Three, because people have just been really responsive and great to work with us to conserve water.”

Until the lake is at full pool and spilling over the dam again, the drought’s nowhere close to a resolution. But the recent rainfall is the first precipitation event to make a significant impact on local lake levels in a very long time.

“It has rained a good bit in the past few weeks, but our water table had just gotten so low,” said Freeman. “All the ponds on people’s farms were already empty. Those smaller bodies of water have got to fill up again, and run over, before we see water that actually goes into the lake. Unless you get a hard rain like we had yesterday, that takes a good while.

“Usually, by the middle of February, the lake is full and spilling over. And most of the time, it will spill over for five or six months in a row. But this is just one of those times when it just hasn’t rained enough. We had the drought back in 2007 and 2008, and then we had one in 2000 in 2001. It seems like it happens about every six or seven years. You just have to ride it out.”