Monday July 13, 2026
The Sacramento Bee —
During his winter drives up Interstate 80 toward Lake Tahoe, Sean Bigley keeps his eyes peeled. He isn’t just watching traffic — he’s also scanning the highway shoulders to see exactly how much snow has fallen.
To Bigley, the city of Roseville’s environmental utilities director, a bare roadside is an early warning sign.
“You may see snow in the upper reaches of the mountain tops, but you may not necessarily see that (along) Interstate 80,” he said. “And so that may indicate it may not be a good year coming.”
A “good year” is tied to water levels at Folsom Lake. Fed largely by melting Sierra snowpack, the reservoir supplies water to the Sacramento region and much of California through the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — a federal water management agency. Because of that, Bigley’s roadside observations can offer not only an early glimpse at the water year ahead but also local recreation options and Chinook salmon breeding.
This winter, however, Bigley’s glances could carry extra weight as a critical December threshold could be missed. Folsom Lake is slated to hold 266,000 acre-feet of water at the end of the year, according to a letter sent to Reclamation by Water Forum Ashlee Casey, the executive director Water Forum, an organization that advocates to balance different water needs from supply to environmental.