Lanier could fall six feet this summer
According to an article in the Gwinnett Daily Post, the Army Corps of Engineers expect Lake Lanier to fall around six feet this summer if the weather is similar to 2007.
On the other hand, he said that it could possibly refill by the end of the year if there were heavy rains. From what I can gather, the only way it’ll fill by the end of the year is if those “heavy rains” are from hurricanes and/or tropical storms, which is certainly possible.
A drop of six feet from our current level would put the lake at roughly 1051′. While that would be bad for business at the lake (as they mentioned in the article), there really wouldn’t be any impact on our water supply. Even dropping below the dead pool would have a minimal effect.
I’m curious why they say it would only be a six foot drop if the weather was similar to last year. Last year from this time to the end of the year we saw about a 15 foot drop. We’re starting lower this year, would means that water would drop more quickly. Why just six feet? Anyone know the answer?
On another note, I apologize for the lack of posts lately — there simply hasn’t been much news. If you know of a story that we should mention on the site, please feel free to contact me. Thanks!
Tags: army corps, dead pool, lake lanier
May 20th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
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.
May 21st, 2008 at 5:52 am
the sky COULD fall
(REALLY, it COULD)
May 21st, 2008 at 7:23 am
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.
May 21st, 2008 at 9:36 am
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.
May 21st, 2008 at 12:05 pm
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!
May 21st, 2008 at 12:12 pm
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.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:25 pm
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.
May 24th, 2008 at 7:20 am
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!!!!
May 28th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
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.
May 29th, 2008 at 9:02 am
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.