November 4, 2026: Latest Update
Last update for the evening.
County Road 501 is still closed.
DWR did measure the Pine (Los Pinos) today. For those of you checking the gages, you may have noticed the big change down in the flow value below Vallecito Reservoir around 5:00 pm. The actual water in the river did not physically change, but the graph did. The flow turned out to be closer to 1,800 cfs. More than expected but well within parameters. It is still unknow how much inflows there are between the reservoir and the gaging station, including Red Creek, but they could be close to 100 cfs. The best calculation is that the release is nearer to 1,700 cfs. DWR does excellent work and the 1,800 cfs is a solid number.
This makes the gage near Ignacio off more than expected. There may be closer to 2,000 cfs there. The USGS is planning on measuring there tomorrow to get better data. The flows at La Boca also came in higher than expected as well when it was measured today. For the DWR gage, the main issues were the river changing course and sediment from Red Creek. For the USGS, I believe the river scoured and changed the area of the river channel. It has been generating numbers below the rating.
Once both gages are generating better numbers, it will be easier to make river forecasts and change decisions.
The flows along the river are very close to where you may have seen them this morning and should continue to drop very slightly as the inflows from every hillside and creek reduce.
The reservoir has now gone flat and should not fill any more. You should start to see a very small drop in the morning and that drop will increase as the inflows continue to go down. This will continue for many days going forward.
The experts helping us in the decision processes will go over all the new data in the morning and reevaluate and move forward.
Have a nice evening. Still on a positive trend. Be careful, the river is still a hazard.
Very Similar to last night.
DWR is measuring the river at the time of this email. When they are done, you will see a red X on the website. This means there was a measurement. Then you will see the line on the graph drop significantly. This will NOT be a change in the river flow. It is only an correction adjustment down to the amount of water in the river. I believe the flow will drop to a number between 1800 cfs and 1900 cfs. This measurement will include flows between the gage and the reservoir and does have a small error factor. Once that correction factor is in the system, the DWR gage will be more accurate than the USGS gage near Ignacio.
The reservoir is finally going flat and will start to fall in the next 24 hours. We will continue to keep the releases close to where they are now until the reservoir elevation goes down to a safer level. You can see the trends in the graph that was sent last evening.
I will thank many, many people before my last update, but want to especially thank the BOR staff, Barr Engineering and all the Emergency Management staff. The work they did and are continuing to do is spectacular.
More to follow.