Water year hits elusive average

The 2023-24 water year ended Monday, hitting average just about right on the bubble.

Minden received 9.33 inches of precipitation since Oct. 1, 2023, according to National Weather Service records, within a hundredth of an inch of the annual average of 9.34 inches.

Last spring, Natural Resources Conservation Service Hydrologist Jeff Anderson pointed out that it’s exceedingly rare to get a year where precipitation comes in right at average. Usually, they are either larger or smaller than the average.

On Monday afternoon, Anderson said snow telemetry showed the Carson Basin was at 96 percent of median precipitation for the water year.

“The Update Report shows that most of the higher elevation sites came in a bit above normal while the lowest elevation SNOTEL sites, like Spratt Creek and Poison Flat, were about 80 percent of normal,” he said.

Precipitation at Ebbetts and Monitor Pass were both at 102 percent of median for the year, though they were on opposite ends of the range, according to Anderson. Ebbetts was the wettest spot in the basin with 49.9 inches while Monitor had the least precipitation with 21.5 inches.

The driest site was Spratt Creek with 22.9 inches, 79 percent of median, he said.

“As we move into fall soil moisture remains wetter than median, but not as wet as the start of last October,” Anderson said. “Right now soil moisture averages 30 percent saturation based on sensors at the 8- and 20-inch depths for SNOTEL sites for the Carson basin. This compares with an average of 46 percent saturation at the start of October in 2023. We could use some fall rain before the snow flies to get soils saturated with water so spring snowmelt doesn’t have to fill the soil profile before running off to creeks.”

Anderson said a new SNOTEL site was installed at Lost Lakes over Sept. 16-17 at the headwaters of the West Fork of the Carson River.

“Like other SNOTELs in our area, this new site measures snow depth, snow water content, water year precipitation, air temperature and soil moisture and soil temperature,” he said.

Before the closest site to the top of the West Fork was at Carson Pass.

The Conservation Service has used the remote sites to record snowpack in the Sierra since the 1970s.

According to a Feb. 16, 1978, Record-Courier story written by Joyce Hollister, Western Nevadans have been keeping a close eye on Sierra snowpack since 1906. That’s when UNR professor J.E. Church began manually taking snow measurements at Mount Rose.

In a nod to that tradition, Anderson and the Water Master for Lake Tahoe conduct a manual measurement at Mount Rose the first Monday of each winter month.

In the last three months, Nevada has gone from a few dry spots to two-thirds abnormally dry, thanks to the long hot summer, according to Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s Julie Kalansky.

It wasn’t so much heat in the daytime as the lack of nighttime cooling that really made the difference, Kalansky said in the Sept. 23 California-Nevada Drought and Climate Outlook Webinar.

There wasn’t much rain during the summer, either, which was as true of Minden as anywhere else in the West.

The average highest minimum temperature for July in Minden was 53.2 degrees, up from the average of 49 degrees. This year was 1.5 degrees short of the record highest minimum of 54.7 degrees sit in 1936. Weather records have been kept in Minden since 1906.

The Douglas County seat recorded zero moisture in June and July and only .02 inches during August.

Kalansky said long term forecasts for the next three months indicate a 33-40 percent chance for warmer temperatures but 50-50 on whether the weather will be wet or dry.

She said that might be associated with a 71 percent forecast of a coming La Niña, which could persist into next winter.