{"date":"2026-09-18","title":"Mid September: Truckee at Reno at 114% of typical","dek":"A daily record of the Truckee basin as of Friday, September 18, 2026. Same honesty rules as Today's Pulse. Forecasts stay labeled.","paragraphs":["It's mid September, when the Truckee is usually in its summer low, and the Truckee at Reno is **in line with typical** for this date, at 114% of the historical median. That river water is what treatment plants draw for Reno and Sparks taps, and what still has to reach Pyramid Lake at the end of the system. How much is in the river today is the live supply those plants and the terminus are sharing.","The Sierra snowpack is only a *trace* (up to 0.3 in of water in the snow). Trace snow is still a pillow reading, not river flow. Those stations sit above Tahoe and the Truckee; they do not move the live gauges on their own.","Tahoe sits at 6,227.08 ft, 2.02 ft under the legal ceiling, 4.08 ft above its 6,223 ft natural rim, high enough to spill into the Truckee. Pyramid Lake's USGS surface reading is 3,802.04 ft, the terminus. Lake level is whether Tahoe can spill. The 6,229.1 ft legal ceiling is a dam-and-flood number, not a drinking-water reading, and the 6,223 ft natural rim is the lip water has to clear before it leaves the lake on its own.","This snapshot does not include Upstream reservoirs.","NWS River Forecast Center outlook, not the USGS gauge: the Truckee at Reno is expected to stay near 340 cfs through Tuesday, September 22 at 5:00 AM PDT. Source: https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/TRRN2.","Beach postings are a separate clock from the river. Tahoe has a recreational _HAB advisory_ on California's map: Caution at Lake Tahoe Community College (Trout Creek), Caution at Site 13 (Tahoe Keys Lagoons), and Caution at Star Harbor (Lake Tahoe). That posting is a beach warning for swimming and pets, not municipal tap water.","Reno weather: 59°F, 0 mph wind, with air quality rated Moderate: acceptable for most people, though sensitive groups may notice it.","U.S. Drought Monitor: worst of Reno, Tahoe, and Pyramid Lake is **D1 Moderate Drought**. Reno D1 Moderate Drought; Lake Tahoe D1 Moderate Drought; Pyramid Lake D1 Moderate Drought. That map updates weekly. A late August Drought.gov California-Nevada update noted that evaporative demand can stay high even when water-year precipitation is near normal. Independence Lake: The upper 28 ft is owned and operated by TMWA as Reno–Sparks’s drinking-water drought reserve.","No active NWS warnings or advisories for this basin. That is a reading, not a missing feed.","The ground keeps its own count. The USGS catalog shows no earthquakes in the region over the last 24 hours.","Floriston is 613 acres on the NIFC perimeter copied that morning. Containment was not stored in this day's NIFC line. Floriston is the Farad Powerhouse reach, USGS site 10346000. Farad's USGS turbidity series is not a live reading in this day's river paragraph. Wildfire on this corridor does not usually change river water the day it starts. The documented pattern, from the 2024 Gold Ranch Fire on the same stretch of Truckee, is that rain or snow later washes ash and sediment off the burn scar and turbidity spikes. https://foxreno.com/news/local/truckee-river-water-quality-could-be-impacted-due-to-gold-ranch-fire-experts-say TMWA's established response to that kind of sediment is to lean on groundwater and other off-river sources rather than treat degraded river water. Source: NIFC WFIGS current perimeters, https://data-nifc.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/nifc::wfigs-current-interagency-fire-perimeters/about. CAL FIRE incident page (not the same clock as NIFC GIS acres): https://www.fire.ca.gov/incidents/2026/9/16/floriston-fire.","None of those lake and river numbers is a tap-quality reading. Reno and Sparks drinking water is treated river water. TMWA's published annual mix is 85–95% surface water and about 15% groundwater from 82 wells. Chalk Bluff is the main plant, 90 MGD. This site has no live tap-quality feed. This site has no live well-level feed. TMWA's mix includes about 15% from 82 wells, mainly summer peaks and backup."],"worthWatching":null,"caveat":null,"glance":{"renoPctOfMedian":114},"generatedAt":"2026-09-18T11:09:56.389Z"}