Actually, most of the rivers below dams in the northwest that have storage available do not follow the normal river flow. The high flows of spring runoff are stored - making for lower river flows during that time - for release to generate energy during the following winter. Some dams, or projects, have little or no storage, like Snoqualmie Falls, White River, Electron, and Nisqually is sort of in the middle with some, but not a lot of, storage.

All the dams that have storage capacity are storing floodwaters to release after the rivers begin to fall. The Army Corps of Engineers takes control of all storage dam operations in the region when flooding threatens.

I received an email from Tacoma Power's operations manager saying that the heavy rains fell mostly to the north of Mt. Rainier, and although the upper Nisqually was rising, it wasn't nearly as much as the northern rivers. Same with the White and Puyallup Rivers when I last checked those stream gage readings. Tacoma was storing much of the Nisqually runoff because Alder Reservoir was significantly lower than normal for this time of year as of last week. (Of course, that may have changed by today.)

Tacoma was releasing lower than average flows into the Nisqually at the Tribe's, WDFW's, and NMFS' request, rationing the water supply - remember, two weeks ago we were in a drought situation - to protect chinook spawning redds in the river. Although the water supply situation has improved, this was the wisest move, based on available information.

At this point, it looks like chinook and pink salmon survival will be about normal in the Nisqually, Puyallup, and White Rivers. But Nooksack, Skagit, Stillaguamish, and Snohomish basin pinks and chinook will be devastated. A wild guess it that Skagit egg to fry survival for chinook will be less than 2% and pinks will be less than 1%. I guess it's a good thing that marine survival rates are higher now, so that the few smolts that make it out next spring will find good ocean conditions.

Sincerely,

Salmo g.