Lake Tahoe is 6.5 feet higher than it was in October, before heavy rain and snow fell in the Sierra. That leaves the lake's level a little more than two inches from reaching its maximum legal elevation of 6,229.1 feet above sea level. Officials are ramping up the amount of water being released from Lake Tahoe, to make room for the snow melt that is still flowing into the lake. Three feet have already been released from the Tahoe City Dam, this year.
"We've released a significant amount," Chad Blanchard, U.S. District Court Water Master said. "We only had room for 6.5 feet and we had almost 9.5 worth of water come in."
More water is on the way, but it is hard to estimate how much. The snow has melted from the SNOTEL measurement sites, but there is still a lot of unmeasured snow in the higher parts of the mountains.
"The problem is we don't know for sure if there's two inches left or if there's as much as nine inches left to come, equivalent of water," Blanchard said.
Every inch of water builds on the record volume to flow into the lake. The 9.5 feet of inflow is two feet higher than the previous record, set in 1907.
"It's definitely incredible, significantly more than anything we've ever seen in 118 years of record," Blanchard said.
Water is flowing through the Tahoe City Dam at 1,500 cubic feet per second, which is close to the amount that is flowing into the lake. With the remaining snowpack and the high amount of ground water, that has not been the case for much of the year.
"Inflows can be so much higher than our maximum release that there's not much you can do, at times," Blanchard said.
Lake Tahoe's massive size also adds some challenges. The top four inches of the lake is enough to fill Boca Reservoir. At today's rate, it would take more than three days to take one inch of water off the lake's surface, not including inflows.
"In 24 hours, that much water is only equivalent to a very small amount of water off of the surface of the lake, and that is why it's so difficult to operate Tahoe," Blanchard said.
The lake is a much different place than one year ago. Beaches have disappeared in some places, and others are a fraction of what they were. Still, beach-goers say they would rather have the water than the sand.
"It's awesome to go out and be able to paddleboard and take your tube out and get the boats out, which is a lot nicer," Annalisa Suarez, Reno resident said.
"It's nice to finally go jet skiing again because we've been in that drought, but this year's snow levels, the snowboarding was amazing and now you can come down to Lake Tahoe and take a nice swim," Chet Powers, Kings Beach resident said. "It's nice out there. The water's so refreshing in this heat. Especially with the heat wave we've been having."
Since the Sierra has not had a recorded winter like this year's, it is hard to tell when the water run-off will start to taper, but Blanchard says he expects Lake Tahoe's level to peak in mid-July.
