This is just one post in the Drought, Weather & Snowpack Category

Farmers hope for wetter winter

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on November 28, 2008 at 8:41 am

From Reno Gazette Journal:

Despite ending the irrigation season with more water in the Lahontan Reservoir than expected, Lahontan Valley farmers may face another year of water shortages, according to Ernie Schank, president of the board of directors of the Truckee Carson Irrigation District.
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TCID officials initially estimated a final storage of 4,000 acre-feet in Lahontan, but the amount of water in storage by the end of the season totaled about 12,000 acre-feet, Schank said. “Whether the diversions came up or people used less than they thought they would, I don’t know.” As of Tuesday, the reservoir held 22,000 acre-feet, he added.

“If we don’t have at least an average snow year in the Sierra we are surely looking at another shortage,” Schank said. In the past 30 years, the average April to July runoff from the Carson River at Fort Churchill is 178,000 acre-feet. But that has fallen short the past two years. Two years ago, the Carson River supplied less than 50,000 acre-feet and last year it was at only about 80,000 acre-feet, according to Schank.

“Technically, other than in 2006, we’ve been in quite a drought cycle,” Schank said. The irrigation district has managed its resources well enough during the past few years because of the ability to divert several years of storage from Lake Tahoe and the Truckee River, he said. But this year the watershed has become depleted.