It looks like the system will let you reserve permits up to six months out from the current date. When I looked yesterday - January 9 - you could reserve permits up through July 9, but not beyond.
It's odd that the system isn't defaulted to just block out the lottery permit period. The lottery period starts May 1, right? I would be very surprised if the system was accepting May permits six months earlier (during November 2018) before the shutdown, or June permits in December. Both periods are definitely available to reserve on the system now. I wonder what happened on shutdown day or afterwards to reopen those periods?
Once (if?
) the shutdown ends, it will be interesting to see whether the "taken" permits are invalidated, or simply honored leaving fewer permits to assign by lottery? One of my employees "reserved" some permits for the July 4th window, so I'll certainly hear the answer. Either way, there will be unhappy people.
