River Folk

Today we had some heavy rain. It wasn't your typical passing thunderstorm, which comes suddenly with a violent surge, but then passes on; leaving defeated-looking clouds and a hint of sunshine. We we've been under a slow siege it seems. It started with wind two days ago, and a gradual moistening, but yesterday we began to get rain. Today has been a constant near-freezing soak, which I think is in line with the siege analogy. From the looks of the weather report we may be in for a couple more days of cold rain, with snow appearing on the tail end of it all.

I needed to turn in some paperwork at the district office for ski coaching at the high school. Driven by necessity, I braved the drive down Highway 89 from Tahoe City to Truckee today despite the rain. Shortly after passing Squaw Valley I found myself being a distracted driver, constantly craning my neck to get a look as what the river was doing. I eventually pulled over to stand in the downpour and just watch. It made me pretty happy. It reminded me of a blog post I read a nearly 3 years ago by a friend, and "river family" member, who was equally enthralled by running water while volunteering in the Peace Corps in South Africa.

The Swollen Truckee

I have driven past this stretch of river dozens of times, if not hundreds, but it took the rain-swollen runoff today to make me appreciate it again. In my list of gratitudes this past Thanksgiving, rivers were not among the items. I'm adding them now.

Below are some pictures from the source at Lake Tahoe. While walking across the dam today, I learned that The Lake Tahoe Dam creates a reservoir 6.1 feet above the natural rim (the point at which the lake no longer empties into the Truckee river), creating an additional 744,000 acre feet of water to supply the Truckee Meadows Watershed. By regulation, the dam is required to supply at least a measly 50 cfs from October to March, and a meager 70 cfs from March to October.

Looking at the USGS data from today, The dam at Tahoe City was releasing 56 cfs and 20 miles downstream, in Truckee, they were reading 1,600 cfs. That was some rain we got today, folks.