Residents of the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles will get their lake back months early, thanks to the massive Eastern Sierra snowpack. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power drained the 96-acre open-air reservoir in 2015 for construction to divert drinking water to a new, covered reservoir that complies with updated storage regulations. The department had planned to begin refilling Silver Lake Reservoir in May, using local water sources in a process that would have taken about 12 months.