Category Archives: Drought

Rain with more coming

Boreal Ridge Ski webcam screen capture on morning of 10/28/16

Lake Tahoe once again is seeing a bounce from a wet and warm weather system. As of the morning on Friday, October 28 Tahoe’s elevation has risen about 0.1 feet or just about 1.2 inches. If the rain continues, Tahoe will continue to rise as rain falls directly on the lake as well as additional inflow from streams.

Lake Tahoe Elevation October 28, 2016

Tahoe is a big lake so a 1.2″ rise represents a significant amount of water. Rain should continue on and off today in the mountains and Truckee Meadows and then showers and rain again on Sunday. The National Weather Service reports that we could set a precipitation record for October in Reno given previous wet storms and this series of storms. Snow levels at this point are high with rain on most of the mountain passes. By Sunday, the National Weather Service says snow levels will lower to around the Lake Tahoe elevation.

Below are captures of webcams from Boreal Ridge Ski and Heavenly Valley Ski areas around 8:38 am on Friday 10/28. They show a sodden landscape – but free of snow at this point.

Boreal Ridge Ski webcam screen capture on morning of 10/28/16. Boreal is on the crest of the Sierra Nevada and is just west of the divide between the Truckee River and the South Yuba River.

Heavenly Valley Ski webcam screen capture on morning of 10/28/16. Southeast shore of Lake Tahoe from ski run above Stateline, NV.

Obama says Lake Tahoe is sacred; plans to return as citizen

Tahoe rises; still below rim

Pyramid Lake as rain moves in from the west

The recent rain in the northern Sierra and western Nevada was certainly welcome.

I just saw a Facebook post declaring that “11 billion gallons of water added to Lake Tahoe …”. Yes, Tahoe did rise about 3″, so its elevation today is about 6,222.75′ but still 3″ below its rim. So by the Facebook post’s reckoning, there remains an 11 billion gallon deficit.

Lake Tahoe Surface Elevation October 19, 2016

To be sure, the water year is just 3 weeks old and the 3 day rainstorm was a good start to the fall and winter season. Will we get a double or triple precipitation and snowpack year? We would need that and a lot more to make up for the 16 year drought the entire southwest has experienced.

While we can hope for a record-setting snowpack this winter, hope is not going to solve our continuing water crisis. We need to recognize the very real possibility that the average annual precipitation of the 20th century is less – perhaps far less – in the 21st century. The first sixteen years of this century have produced snowpack runoff resulting in only about 70% of the 20th century’s average river flows in the Truckee River. Expecting an end to the lower flows of the Truckee River is sticking our heads in the sand.

Not literally, I hope.

For a perspective on just how much less runoff we’ve gotten, look at a past truckeeriver.org article “Just 14 years ago …” written in 2014.

Truckee River at Tahoe City receives no water from Lake Tahoe.

Lake Tahoe forecast to rise above rim

Lake Tahoe at Zephyr Cove Pier. Tahoe's water elevation on January 20 stands 7" below its rim so no water can flow into the Truckee River from the Lake.

On December 1 Lake Tahoe’s elevation was 6,221.47 feet. Today, the last day of 2015 Lake Tahoe stands 0.13 feet higher at 6,221.60 – still 1.4 feet below its rim (16.8 inches). The latest forecast from the Natural Resources Conservation Service for Lake Tahoe indicates that it will rise above its rim allowing water to flow into the Truckee River at Tahoe City. Lake Tahoe has been below its rim since October 17, 2014. Previously, the Lake dropped below its rim in 2009.

Predicted runoff for the Truckee River Basin for 2016. The black line represents the “median” projected runoff.

The NRCS predicts that the Truckee River will flow at 98 percent of average for the forecast season. The Reno-Gazette Journal today reported that “[t]he forecast combines snowpack data with historical records to predict how much water people can expect to flow into Lake Tahoe and the region’s river.”

While there is more optimism about an average, or even above average, snowpack this year, where we will end up on April 1 is still unknown. We all hope that winter will continue to produce above average snow and rain.

Common Goldeneye duck on the Truckee River near Idlewild Park, Reno

Common Goldeneye on the Truckee near Idlewild Park

Tahoe’s level still declining despite rain and snow

Tahoe got a slight up tick last Monday (11/2) from the storm which saw significant rainfall of nearly an inch in the Reno area. It didn’t last, though. In fact, Tahoe stands lower this Friday (11/6) than it did before the storm. Of course, the snow and colder temperatures keeps the water in the mountains (which is a good thing), but the water that fell directly on the Lake as either rain or snow should have had a more upward effect, I would think. Nevertheless, Tahoe is down now to 6221.7 feet – almost a tenth of a foot lower from just a little over a week ago. That means it must rise 15.6 inches just to reach the point at which water can begin to enter the Truckee River at “Fanny bridge”. The storm was great, but it appears that we are going to need a lot more storms and a lot stronger storms than this one to dig ourselves out of the 15 year deficit in overall precipitation.

Lake Tahoe is still declining despite the early Nov storm.

Drought through January 2016 for N. Nevada & California?

The latest forecast map from the Climate Prediction Center shows Northern Nevada and California in a “drought persists/intensifies” category through January 2016. This seasonal outlook is an update from an earlier map which only went through December. The report accompanying the map has this to say regarding California and the Sierra:

October 2015 through January 2016 drought outlook

“For the Southwest, El Niño associated climate anomalies favor an enhancement of the early wet season. Therefore, drought improvement is favored across central and southern California. There is greater confidence for improvement across the coastal regions and valleys, whereas significant improvement across the Sierras relies on colder temperatures to support substantial snowfall.”