RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – Truckee Meadows Water Authority is releasing their data for the 2026 Water Supply Outlook, and despite a warm winter it doesn’t look like we will be in a drought here in the Truckee Meadows.
“Thanks to our upstream reservoirs, we are actually in good shape from a water supply perspective. And you can see that we are actually slightly above medium for precipitation at 106% for this time of year. So a lot of what that means is a lot of our precipitation fell as rain instead of snow, especially in the fall months, and then also at lower elevations during some of the warmer events this winter. So we did receive moisture, it was just not in the form of snow,” says Kara Steeland, a hydrologist at Truckee meadows Water Authority.
Steeland says the flow of the Truckee River plays a role in whether they will have to release any water from reservoirs, but this year Steeland says we shouldn’t have to.
“With significant water available in the reservoir portion of Lake Tahoe, and also the other upstream reservoirs, the required rate of flow at the California Nevada State Line will be met through the water year, which is when reservoir storage is available,” says Steeland. “So what that means for us is that we will not need to release any drought reserves this year, because there is sufficient storage in Lake Tahoe, meaning there are normal, what we call normal river flows.”
That being said, these reservoirs are a good thing to have to help give us a buffer when we have a disappointing snowpack year.
“By having the Truckee River Operating Agreement in place and the regulations around releases out of the upstream reservoirs, it allows us to have this reliable water supply moving forward. So really we, you know, the last decades or even 100 years of planning on this system have allowed us to be in this position to be able to deal with this variability that we experience in snowpack,” says Steeland.
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