Quote:
Originally Posted by ishoot308
I was going by your lake level chart (see below) which shows it to be at the same level as 2022 and 2020 for this time of year...Is the chart incorrect??...or has it changed that much since the chart was updated??
Dan
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The 2022 and 2020 and this year results were both an early and RAPID increase compared to the approximately 40 year mean level of the lake at this time of year. The lake is currently about 6" higher than the mean. This is, of course, due to weather events and the choices of the dam managers. It's been warm enough for an early ice out and to melt all the local snow pack and we had a series of rain storms. The dam managers dropped the lake to normal mean levels at the end of February and then shut the outflow to relatively low levels, just when we got a bunch of rain. The dam flow is now back up at 1400 CFS, a good clip to dump a little excess water and the lake level has responded. We are about to get a BIG snowstorm but all that will melt fairly quickly adding to runoff.
Will we continue to get a lot of rain or will things dry up for next couple of months? The dam operators will continue to respond as best they can.
The reality is, variation from the mean is normal. We can note that the lake is a little high but 6" of extra water can be dealt with in a week or so if downstream is not already flooding. If we get a couple of 3" rain events back to back it will send the lake up high and probably take a few weeks to dump the excess water. That's where we were in January and it was back to normal at the end of February. The prediction is for average levels of precipitation for the next few months, however, suppose all that precipitation happens in the next few weeks and then it goes dry? The amount could be "average" over 3 months but heavily skewed to right NOW. What happens if the lake comes up to a nice full level for May and then we get a couple 3+ inch storms? Panic, shore damage, No Wake? And there is no action we can take right now to prevent a problem if that is what happens. We could leave the lake low but if we don't get normal rainfall we would have people hitting rocks. That tends to happen in the Fall from time to time.
The only thing the lake managers can do is plan for the mean; the mean amount of expected rain and target the mean lake levels (because they generally work). Then they they have to respond to the actual weather, which can have extremes.