Drought cuts flow from Boca, river to drop

In a further sign of a drought of historic intensity, flow from a diminished Boca Reservoir into the Truckee River halted Thursday.

By Friday, with summer's official start still more than two months away, river levels should begin to drop noticeably across the Reno area.

"We're out of water and we're ramping it down," Federal Water Master Chad Blanchard said of the need to begin closing Boca's floodgates Thursday morning.

"We are out of useable ... storage, which is by far the earliest ever," Blanchard said. "It's something we've never seen before. We've never run out this early before."

Last year, during the drought's third year, flow from Boca was cut off July 31. The previous earliest date this situation was reached was June 5, 1992, during the height of a lengthy drought. Records date back more than a century.

Everyone expected the river's flow to cut off early this year, Blanchard said. Just not this early.

"It's way beyond what we imagined we would see," Blanchard said. "We're in uncharted waters, or uncharted lack of waters."

Snowfall in the Sierra has been far below normal for the past four winters, with the most recent one the worst yet. The Truckee River Basin's snowpack Thursday was measured at 15 percent of normal for this time of year. The Carson River Basin's was at 1 percent.

At Lake Tahoe, the snowpack was at zero.

Tahoe, the Truckee River's largest reservoir, dropped below its natural rim in October, cutting off flow into the river. Tahoe is not expected to rise above its natural rim this year.

With the flow out of Boca halted, river levels will lower quickly, with the river nourished mostly by limited natural snowmelt flowing from its creeks.

Summer flows will now come only from reservoir storage dedicated to the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe to maintain fisheries and to the Truckee Meadows Water Authority, which will soon begin tapping drought reserves in Stampede Reservoir and Donner and Independence lakes.

The authority, the primary water provider for Reno-Sparks, has asked its customers to cut water use by at least 10 percent.