North Texas drought is over: now what?

O

orangecat1

500+ Posts
Because of the soaking rains, at least five that have happened since December 1, we are out of the drought. The lakes will improve even more today and tomorrow because of the rain last night.

But Lake Lavon for example is still 5+ feet lower than it should be. So what should our policy be?

I, for one, think we should maintain some form of conservation, and never go back to the days of unlimited watering your yard.

To me, I don't see any reason for any entity, gov't, business, or individual, to water their yard five times a week during a 100+ degree summer. Is there a chance the powers that be will maintain some conservation?

But, what happens if the rain continues? Can it rain too much? iow, do they have a plan?

Could the north texas area sell excess water to other parts of the state?
 
you guys will be fine. This **** happens, you're Texans you'll power through it and the floods and tropical depressions will eventually
come.

Los angeles, pheonix and Vegas are the ones that really have to worry.
 
after another day of rain the other day, Lake Lavon is not at 488 feet, now only four feet below normal.

Will be interesting to see if/when we go off stage 3 water restrictions.
 
Well Drought continues here for CT. We have gotten some rain this year but nothing to bring lake levels up much.

Lake Travis is at 627 (normal is 670)
Lake Buchanan is at 990 (normal is 1011)

The combined resevoir is only 38% full. Can't image what it will be like if this drought continues through the summer.
 
oops, it was at 488, now the website shows it back at 487 feet. Either way, four or five feet from full.

From the experience we had in North Texas, the first two rainstorms do nothing for lake levels, but starting with the third we really saw a nice increase in the lakes.
 
update, so far today, according to WFAA, the metro area is getting well over 1 inch of rain. Arlington received 1.7 inches, and the weatherman also noted that Waco received over 2 inches.

I have been looking at these lake levels recently and have noticed that we are getting very close to full lakes, all over north Texas. I added up the surpluses of lake levels, subtracted these from the deficits that are in the North Texas Municipal Water District, and before today's rain, I had a grand total of a deficit of about 5 feet. (this included the large lake at Texarkana, which had a surplus of over 4 feet and was releasing over 21000 cfs.)

I noticed a couple of weeks ago that Pete Delkus reported Lake Arlington had risen 5 feet, after their rain total of 5 inches was also reported. I know it's not exact science, but if you generalize that 1 inch of rain = 1 foot of lake levels, we're getting extremely close to our goal, full lakes.

After all of this weekends water has runoff in to the lakes, I expect the combined deficit to be less than 4 feet, maybe down to 3 feet.

Should be interesting.
 
Here in the northern burbs we're hearing mandatory water rationing. The key is Lake Lavon and it's inability to keep pace with the water usage in fast-growing Collin County. They used to import water from Lake Texoma, dumping it in tributaries that feed Lake Lavon. But the environmentalists (with good reasons) want to keep the zebra mussels out of Texas Lakes so they'll have to build a big pipeline across Grayson County to get the water south. I notice Lantana and Highland Village in Denton County are implementing stage 2 water conservation, meaning watering only two days a week and no watering during high evaporation hours.
 
Crockett, I agree with what you are saying. Do you know if the guys in charge are actually going to build the pipeline? We definitely need that pipeline, imo.

A new drought map will most likely come out on Tuesday and I expect the number of counties out of the drought to be more like 20something instead of the current 15ish.
 
and wow, we've done it, we've conserved enough water, and had another huge rainstorm, and Lake Lavon will officially be at a normal level by the end of the week.

Our cumulative deficit at this moment in the North Texas Municipal Water District is only one foot.

A far difference from December 1.

Now the two big questions are about the zebra mussel problem, and restrictions. What happens if the rain continues, and the water district fails to communicate effectively about the zebra mussel problem? People will probably just start ignoring the restrictions, and it will be up to the local cities to decide whether to enforce restrictions or not.

One thing for sure, we're not going to stage 4 this summer, we should probably go back to stage 2 effective June 1.
 
more importantly, is anybody actually trying to solve the zebra mussel problem?

Another reporter wrote a little article describing the problem, so I asked him to try to find out if anybody is working on a solution.

I would imagine there are some marine biologists who could offer some research and/or suggestions.
 
I just Googled Zebra Mussels. Yikes. I don't have a boat, but I hope those who do are getting information about the mussels.

Thanks for posting about this.
 
I've been watching the drought monitor, and there are parts of 22 or 21 counties that are out of the drought as of the March 13 map. The counties include the big four in the metroplex, Dallas, Tarrant, Collin, Denton.

I expect that number to rise to close to 30 counties when the next map is posted, and that map should be posted anytime. It is normally posted about once a week.
 
update the North Texas Municipal Water District now officially has a net surplus/deficit of 0!!!! Iow, no deficit from lake levels.

But, of course the zebra mussel problem. So, I hope they are smart enough to inform the public that the 28% or so of the water supply cannot be used, because of the mussels, so in reality, they could say we have about 72% of the water supply available.
 
Orangecat, where do you get your data? I found a pretty cool website to look at lake levels and even draw graphs. The Link

The best article I found on the potential North Texas Municipal Water District Pipeline was in the Royce City NewspaperThe Link
 
The Army Corps of Engineers website is even more up to date. Right now, for example, the Corps website shows Lavon at 492.52, compared to the Texas lakes website, which shows yesterdays 492.11.
 
update, our cumulative surplus in the North Texas Municipal Water District is now over +2 feet!!!

Wow!

I imagine the surplus will continue to grow for a few more days before leveling off.

Texoma is 4 feet above normal, but more amazing is that Lavon is almost an entire foot above normal.

More impressive is that we're a whisker away from having 100 counties out of the drought. One or two more impressive rain storms and we'll get there.

I don't hold out much hope for getting all 254 counties out of the drought, but considering where we've been in the last year 100 counties out of the drought will be huge.
 
the great thing about watching this coming out of the drought period was learning about the process. It all started around the 1st of December when we finally got a good rainstorm. Then another. The first two storms did basically nothing for lake levels. The ground was just soaking up the water.

But starting with the 3rd storm, I noticed a nice increase in lake levels every time. One of the lakes that has had the highest increase is Lake Whitney, I know further south. But Whitney has increased 20 feet.

I would guess that the total number of storms since December 1 has been 8-10.

So, based on that, I think your lakes in central Texas probably need at least 8-10 more storms over the next three months to get within shouting distance of full. You need about a forty feet increase in Lake Travis, for example.
 
One other interesting thing I just noticed is that DFW has had just a little more rain than Austin in '12. DFW - 13.80, Austin 13.02. The difference- we were just barely in a drought when the year started, and the Austin area was probably in D-3 or D-4, the most severe categories.
 
as of yesterday, March 26, the cumulative surplus is now approximately 3.75 feet. This is incredible! There is no reason to stop water restrictions, because of the zebra mussel problem.

But, the water district will soon lose credibility because they've said that once lakes get full they will look at easing restrictions.

What is really funny is if we get another rain storm while still in stage 3 restrictions, and the water district has to report that water is being released because of too much water in the lakes.
 
The Link

check this out. This is really strange, to me at least. Lakes Tawakoni and Jim Chapman have not reached their full level, and Lavon is only a little over one foot above normal.

All they have to do is wait, and the water will be used, and/or evaporation will take place over time.

This is a possible PR disaster I thought might happen, but I didn't really expect it to happen.

These nuts are going to leave Stage 3 water restrictions in at the same time releasing water. Complete mixed message. Dumb, if you ask me.
 
The Woodlands cancelled water restrictions and, to me, that's a big mistake. Without the restrictions people here waste a ton of water. They could have eased them, but telling people "its all good" and letting throw open the valves is sending the wrong message.
 
...and the North Texas Municipal Water District must have heard me. AFTER announcing the release of water, they announced reduction of restrictiosn from Stage 3 modified to Stage 3. Stage 3 modified was watering once a month, now we are allowed to water once a week.

I did notice that the amount of water they are releasing is very small, something in the hundreds of cfs, hardly worth mentioning, imo.

Obviously they need to hire me to help them make decisions and decide what needs to be broadcast.
 
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