Trout Creek, a South Shore tributary to Lake Tahoe, is flooding back yards; in this location it’s in a front yard. Photo/Kathryn Reed

By Amy Graff, San Francisco Chronicle

After a winter and early spring marked by unrelenting storms, the Sierra Nevada is piled high with snow. Now, as the storms taper off and the temperatures warm up, the snowpack is beginning to melt and runoff into rivers and lakes.

One place that’s seeing a huge impact from all the runoff is Lake Tahoe.

Since April 1, the start of the snow melt season, 219,600 acre feet —that’s 71,556,879,600 gallons — of water have poured into the lake, according to Chief Deputy Federal Water Master Dave Wathen.

As a result the lake is filling up fast, and about a foot away from reaching full capacity. Federal wanter managers say Tahoe will fill this summer for the first time in 11 years, and when it does, the total amount it will have risen across the water-year between Oct. 1 and Sept. 30 will be record-breaking. 

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