Water year 2027
How this year sits on the record
Trends is the decade view of snow, Truckee flow, and Lake Tahoe elevation. Live gauges, pillow cards, reservoir photos, and the data-center chapter live on Story. The map holds the quake catalog. This page does not reprint those.
Every water year is compared against the ten years before it, and against the same dates one year ago, so you can see whether this year is running wet, dry, or ordinary. Flow is the USGS daily river readings at Tahoe City, Farad, and Reno. Lake elevation is the USGS daily Tahoe surface series. Snow is the average from six SNOTEL stations, as a percent of that date's historical median, the same measure as the Story snow chapter, tracked October to September.
- Notable
A recreational HAB advisory is posted on California's map. That is a swim notice, not tap water.
Cubic feet per second (cfs) measures how much water passes a point every second. One cfs is about 7.5 gallons — roughly a large cooler’s worth — moving by each second. Glossary: cfs.
This week on the ground
USGS recorded 8 earthquakes of magnitude 1 or larger in the last 7 days around Reno and Tahoe. The strongest was magnitude 2.8, 20 km ESE of Silver Springs, Nevada. People reported feeling 1 of those. This is a seven-day count from the same catalog as the map, not a decade chart.
- M 1.7 13 km ESE of Fernley, Nevada Mon, Oct 19, 10:12 AM
- M 1.5 13 km E of Fernley, Nevada Sun, Oct 18, 7:47 PM
- M 2.3 14 km E of Fernley, Nevada Sun, Oct 18, 7:39 PM
- M 2.3 14 km ESE of Fernley, Nevada Sun, Oct 18, 2:40 PM
- M 1.6 13 km ESE of Fernley, Nevada Sun, Oct 18, 2:22 PM
- M 1.6 18 km SE of Silver Springs, Nevada Fri, Oct 16, 1:58 PM
- M 2.8 20 km ESE of Silver Springs, Nevada Thu, Oct 15, 2:34 AM
- M 1.5 21 km ESE of Silver Springs, Nevada Tue, Oct 13, 9:20 PM
River flow
This year, the same dates one year ago, and the median of the prior ten years. The shaded band is that ten-year high and low. A flood peak that would flatten the rest of the year is clipped so smaller days stay readable.
Get more data USGS Truckee River at Tahoe City 10337500
This year, the same dates one year ago, and the median of the prior ten years. The shaded band is that ten-year high and low. A flood peak that would flatten the rest of the year is clipped so smaller days stay readable.
Get more data USGS Farad 10346000
This year, the same dates one year ago, and the median of the prior ten years. The shaded band is that ten-year high and low. A flood peak that would flatten the rest of the year is clipped so smaller days stay readable.
Get more data USGS Reno 10348000
Lake Tahoe elevation
- Trending
Lake Tahoe surface elevation has been falling across the last 14 days of this water year.
this water year's daily series on Trends, not a live snapshot alone
This year, the same dates one year ago, and the median of the prior ten years. The shaded band is that ten-year high and low. Tahoe's surface only moves a few feet, so this axis stays in that range.
Get more data USGS Lake Tahoe at Tahoe City 10337000
Snowpack
This year, the same dates one year ago, and the median of the prior ten years. The shaded band is that ten-year high and low. A flood peak that would flatten the rest of the year is clipped so smaller days stay readable.
Get more data NRCS snow survey Palisades Tahoe Mt. Rose Ski Area Tahoe City Cross Heavenly Valley Echo Peak Marlette Lake
The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe's August 2026 data-center moratorium, TRIGID's river entitlement, and TMRPA's live comment hub sit in Story, not on these charts. Who supplies the campuses, and the live public process.
Notable years
This water year
Water year 2026 · This water year skipped spring
California DWR’s April 1, 2026 survey put statewide snowpack at 18% of average, Northern Sierra 6%, after an early peak around February 24 and a record-hot, dry March. Director Karla Nemeth said it felt like the state skipped spring. That statewide survey is not these six local pillows alone. For this basin, Nevada Current reported TMWA’s Truckee SWE at its second-lowest April reading since 1986, under a quarter of typical, while reservoir storage from wetter years let TMWA expect normal operations without drought reserves. NRCS said Tahoe and Truckee precipitation through April 1 was near normal; the missing piece was snow, not rain. Drought.gov called the March heat a snow-eater heat wave. A July 2026 PNAS paper led by Colorado School of Mines found a western U.S. snow drought this severe about 4.4 times more likely in today’s climate than from 1850 to 1900. That paper is West-wide, strongest for the Upper Colorado, not a Truckee-only finding.
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Water year 2017 · January 2017 flood
Warm Sierra storms ran snow levels above 8,000 feet. The Truckee rose above flood stage at Reno, Truckee, and Vista; downtown bridges closed and hundreds of homes evacuated.
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Water year 2019 · Wet 2019 spring
A solid Sierra snowpack kept spring and early-summer flow above the dry years that followed: a reminder that “normal” in this basin is a wide band, not a single line.
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Water year 2021 · 2021 drought summer
Water years 2020–2022 were among California’s driest three-year stretches on record. Late-summer Truckee flow sat in the low end of the band on this chart.
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Water year 2022 · Third dry year
Another meager snow year left little melt pulse behind. These markers are dates, not a claim that the gauge caused the drought, only that the river sat in a historically low range that year.
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Water year 2023 · 2023 melt pulse
After one of the biggest snow years on record, spring runoff ran high for months as all that snow melted into the river. That’s a slow, seasonal melt, a very different (and much safer) kind of high water than the sudden rain-on-snow flood of January 2017.
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Water year 2017 · Heavy 2017 snow, then rain
A large Sierra snowpack met warm January storms, the same storms that flooded the river (see that chart). The April 1 reading here is the snowpack that fed it.
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Water year 2021 · 2021 thin pack
Statewide Sierra snowpack sat far below average by April 1st, one of three dry years in a row. A thin pack like this often melts out and disappears well before summer even starts, leaving less water for the months when it’s needed most.
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Water year 2022 · 2022 still dry
The third lean snow year in a row. Three consecutive below-average winters like this is what drives a multi-year drought, not any single dry year on its own.
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Water year 2023 · 2023 Sierra bounty
Automated snow sensors across the Sierra measured 61.1 inches of snow water equivalent, the amount of water locked in the snowpack, 237% of the historical average for that date, among the largest snowpacks in the modern record. Central Sierra snowpack was also 237% of its April 1 average.