Truckee River Stops Flowing! It's nothing new!
By Tim Hauserman
Humans practice a form of collective amnesia when it comes to weather events and climate. The recent dropping of Lake Tahoe below it’s natural rim of 6223 feet is a classic example.
I heard a great deal of consternation among the local populace over the last few weeks as the water coming down the Truckee River dribbled to a trickle. Several times people asked me: “Well, you’ve lived here a long time, have you ever seen it go this low before”? Well, actually, in just the last twenty five years the water has dropped below the natural rim a number of times. In fact, the latest news headlines should have given us somewhat of a clue: “Water level reaches 5 year low.” So in other words, it was just 5 short years ago when the lake last dropped below the rim? Yep.
It not only dropped below the rim in 2010, but also in 2005. In 1988, the lake dropped below the rim and the Truckee River didn’t really get going again until 1995. That’s right, just 19 years ago, the lake level was three feet below the natural rim for more then 2 years. Do you remember that? Me neither. Once our favorite piece of big blue fills up we are too busy kayaking, waterskiing, swimming, or hiking along it’s shore to remember the past.
All these ups and downs of the level of Lake Tahoe points to an important thing to remember about weather in the Sierra. An average winter is just an average of all the big winters and small winters over the last 150 years. How those heavy snow years and light snow years stack up, is what gives us the fluctuations in water level. If you look at a chart of the lake level over the last 100 years, it is certainly not a straight line. It’s more like a seismograph of an earthquake, or the heart beat of an athlete reaching their anaerobic threshold while skiing to the top of Squaw Valley in the Billy Dutton Uphill.
So while we can bemoan that the lake has dropped below it’s natural rim a number of times in the last 25 years, it’s also important to note that it rose to just below the legal limit of 6229 feet every year between 1996 and 2001. And in 2006 (just one year after it dropped below the rim). And even as recently as 2011. When the lake goes below the rim it is not a sign of a coming apocalypse, it’s just the way winter rolls in the Sierra. And a reminder to Pray for Snow!