12 billion gallons of water pour into Lake Tahoe amid Golden State heat wave

More than 12 billion gallons of water poured into the big lake over the past week.  Cold, clear, sparkling snowmelt.  Beautiful!

That's a staggering amount of shining, pure water, and resulted in the lake level rising four inches since June 16.

That rise occurred while intense heat increased evaporation rates from the lake's surface. What's more, water managers have been releasing water from the lake into the Truckee River for the past 120 consecutive days to make room for snow-melt runoff. 

"It's not typical to spill at all," says U.S. District Court Water Master Chad Blanchard. "It's only on the big years when you have to release water."

Water Master?  Now that's a job title for a manly man.  I'll bet Chad has a booming voice, tats and a beard, but certainly no bun.  He probably has so many guns he needs two safes.

 Photographer David N. Braun captures the beauty of winter at Lake Tahoe in March 2017.

Straddling the California–Nevada border, Tahoe is the sixth largest lake in the United States, an outdoor playground for people around the world, and the main water source for the Reno-Sparks area in Nevada, as reported previously on SFGATE. The renowned ecological wonder is fed by 63 tributaries that drain 505 square miles known as the Lake Tahoe Watershed. With a vast surface area of 191 square miles, Tahoe requires an immense amount of water to fill, especially because roughly 100 billion gallons of water evaporates annually.

Now, we should investigate how this water flow affects downstream water storage at Pyramid Lake, another big, if less well known desert lake, which is fed by the Truckee.