Comments on: Lanier could fall six feet this summer

By: BertBamboo

BertBamboo — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:02:25 +0000

It looks like Lanier will end May with little or no loss. That’s great news.

I drove to Birmingham last week. All the lakes along I-20 looked pretty full.

By: mulp

mulp — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:20:50 +0000

I found this explains a lot of the considerations on precip, soil moisture, etc, as well as good graphs of the normal lake levels, and the prior record lows:
http://www.caes.uga.edu/topics/disasters/drought/powerpoint/Drought50608.pps
from
http://www.caes.uga.edu/topics/disasters/drought/

I’m in NH where we weren’t thinking in terms of drought a month ago, having been hit with snow every week, and then rain. But we’ve had really dry weather, not hot, but cool (below normal) and very low humidity, and rain that doesn’t hit the ground. Now the soil is really drying out and we are facing fire danger.

So, looking at the presentation and all the charts showing dry soil in GA, and the resulting low stream flows, my guess is that a lot of rain, now that the vegatation is growing good, will be sucked up with little reaching the streams and the lakes.

By: Chicken Little

Chicken Little — Sat, 24 May 2008 12:20:57 +0000

I predict Carol, RichS and Southside Steve will all jump out of a first story window by the end of July as Kirk Melish sends his second (of 5) named tropical sytems over Lake Lanier.

BGAAAAWWKKKKKKKK!!!!

By: RichS

RichS — Wed, 21 May 2008 21:25:41 +0000

Also remember that the downstream lakes are in good shape so Lanier doesn’t have to release as much in order to meet the same minimum flow rates into Florida. The COE process is to try to normalize all the lakes to the same zone. So the additional storage in those lakes should be depleted before Lanier starts getting hit too hard.

By: rkolter

rkolter — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:12:33 +0000

A drought takes into consideration not just the current level of rainfall, but the defecit of rainfall over the past seasons. A year of normal rainfall would be great, but will not make up for the lack of water from last year and would not push the water table to it’s proper height.

A year’s normal rainfall would go a heck of a long way to turning a really awful drought into something lots more managable though.

By: josh

josh — Wed, 21 May 2008 17:05:49 +0000

Water table may be in much better shape as well given the reasonable amount of precip, so that lake will not be losing as much water to seepage, and of course, inflows will be better going forward as well, for the same reason.

Still could use some more rain though!

By: deidson

deidson — Wed, 21 May 2008 14:36:33 +0000

Walter, I think you are right about the end of the drought, depending on how you define drought. Our rainfall totals for the past five months have been a little over 90% of the total expected for that period, with January being the only month that was significantly under the normal amount. If ending the drought means returning to normal rainfall amounts, I’d say we’re either out of the drought now. The media seems to equate low water levels in Lanier with drought, and if that’s the case, normal rainfall for several years would be required to “end the drought”. There has been less inflow to Lanier than normal during the first three months of the year despite the normal rainfall. I suppose this is a result of the water tables being replentished upstream i.e. the ground is soaking up much more of the rainfall than it normally would. My expectation is that we’ll have higher than normal rainfall for the balance of the year, and likely have a more active tropical storm season than in the two previous years. If that’s the case, we won’t be worring about lake levels this winter.

By: rkolter

rkolter — Wed, 21 May 2008 12:23:30 +0000

The difference is that last year the ACE released significantly more water than they would be releasing this year. Remember the month of “average 1.5 billion gallon releases”?

Now with a reduced requirement on the lake thanks to the Fish and Wildlife commission, they can retain a bit more water in the lake. If we assume releases similar to the ones near the end of the summer of 2007, then 6 feet through the summer might be possible.

By: Chicken Little

Chicken Little — Wed, 21 May 2008 10:52:36 +0000

the sky COULD fall

(REALLY, it COULD)

By: Walter

Walter — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:28:12 +0000

Great minds think alike - as I wrote on May 2:

It’s all a guess, and who knows who will be right, but my own guess is that, come November 1, we’ll only be 6′ - or less - off where we are now due to a combination of these and other factors: (i) a beginning of the end of the multiyear drought, (ii) the already in place agreed lower water releases from the dam, and (iii) more watering restrictions in place earlier (summer watering for lawns accounts for a lot of outflows from the lake and much of this water is not returned to the river because it does not go through Atlanta’s sewer system). There will be a lot less use of lake water for that this summer (as compared to 2006).

Now some criticized me for the unsupported “we’re coming out of the drought” comment but I’ve read from several sources that, while the drought is still here, things are (and have been) improving somewhat - at least in much of the state.