A Little Rain Goes a Long Way- Half the Lake Deficit Recovered
The City of Raleigh released a detailed update about our water shortage today. The recent rains rapidly recovered a third of the lakes capacity or 5 billion gallons and extended our usable water another 135 days or well into November.
The release underscored that our usage had only dropped by a meager 5% under stage 2 restrictions, from 40.3 million gallons a day to 38.5. This recovery is certainly encouraging in the face of such an anxiety inducing problem. Previously the droughts of 1993, 2002 and 2005, saw Falls Lake within one foot of its normal level by mid March. Under stage 2 restrictions only 14 violations have been cited with the new $1,000 fine.
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Steve W
03/11 10:25 PM
David, we received 2-4 inches of rain across the entire watershed, and the water supply pool went from about 34% of capacity to 68%. Lake Michie in the northern part of the watershed also filled back up so we benefited from almost all of the watershed area. You are right that demand under Stage 2 water restrictions has not decreased very much, so we are lucky the Falls Lake watershed is so powerful when we get anywhere near normal rains.
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150
03/12 02:05 PM
Let’s keep a few things in mind here, before concluding that the deficit recovery is solely due to the recent rain.
On March 3, the Army Corps of Engineers reduced the lake release to the Neuse by 17 million gallons/day. This obviously has an effect on the reservoir level.
The 3-month seasonal outlook from the CDC still has NC with a higher likelyhood of below normal precipitation. As temperatures increase, so will the evapotranspiration, meaning our water supply will be depleted at a faster rate than it is currently.
We’re still not out of a drought. Things are improving, but let’s keep the big picture in mind.
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