Lanier not dropping as quickly as most people think
It’s been widely reported that Lake Lanier is dropping 1.4-1.5 feet every week (we even said so). After I saw that number posted again while watching “Georgia’s Water Crisis” on WSB, I decided to do some research. These numbers are taken from the USGS and summarized on this page. Here are the recent weekly losses.
Sept 29-Oct 5: -0.80 feet
Oct 6-12: -0.72 feet
Oct 12-19: -1.19 feet
Oct 20-26: -0.51 feet
None of those are close to 1.4 feet, and average well under a foot. I decided to e-mail WSB’s Glenn Burns, since he was a big part of the WSB water special and here was his reply:
It is not constant and does not take into account the evaporation we had in the summer. In the summer, 200 million gallons a day was being evaporated from the lake every day! The water they let out will vary with rainfall. They will let out between 1-3 billion gallons per day.
That didn’t really answer the question. Maybe he means it was losing water that quickly during the summer, but now it’s not?
Of course, with no rain in the forecast for probably a couple weeks, the level of decrease will likely begin a slow acceleration. With all of this though, I’d be quite curious to hear how various people are coming up with the number of days we have left (80, 120, 240, etc). The “three months left” that seems to be the most popular number works out well when you consider a 1.5 ft/week drop in Lanier; 20 feet to go at 1.5 feet/week = 13 weeks. However, if the loss is typically less than a foot a week, maybe Alabama Gov. Bob Riley is right about us having 260 days left.
