The snowpack in the Sierra continues to reflect the drought conditions that have stressed Northern Nevada in recent years.
For the third year in a row, the Truckee Meadows and other nearby basins on the Eastern Sierra have only about two thirds of the normal snowpack. Or, put another way: we’ve lost a year’s worth of precipitation in this most recent drought cycle.
“The reservoir storage on the Truckee River is only about 25 percent of capacity.”
Jeff Anderson is a hydrologist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“We have been using the stored water that we got from the 2011 snowpack, but we are sort of getting towards the end of what’s available. This is a critical year for our water supply.”
Indeed, earlier this year, the local water authority tapped into its drought reserves for the first time in the last 20 years. Anderson says, while snow has accumulated in the higher elevations, not nearly enough has stuck lower than that, which means less run off.
The climate prediction center is calling for a greater than normal chance of precipitation in the coming months, but warmer temperatures than average are also anticipated.
Chad Blanchard, who’s the federal water master, says a big concern, heading into the new year, is the water in Lake Tahoe, the region’s largest reservoir. Currently, that’s about a half a foot below the rim, meaning no water can be released downstream into the Truckee River.
“So we need to store quite a bit of water before there is anything even usable at all in Tahoe. That puts us in a place we hate to be in…if we don’t have water in Tahoe, or very little, that definitely affects our water supply going into next year.”
Over the last century, the region has never seen four dry years in a row. Blanchard and others watching the water situation here hope, this coming year, we don’t make history.