The Lake Report By: Blake Kellum SJRA

February 6, 2013

The Climate Cycle

Recently, I read something very thought-provoking. Two of the Great Lakes, Huron and Michigan, have reached all-time low water levels. No doubt that this will lead more people to conclude that low lake level is a direct result of “man-made” global warming. I’m not convinced about the “man-made” part of the claim and neither are many scientists.

There is little doubt, however, that the nation and our State are experiencing a warmer and dryer climate cycle. Especially when you look back through over 100 years of weather records, you will inevitably see that this event occurs every 40 or 50 years in these parts. It happened, during an extended drought in Texas at the turn of the century, which in turn inspired the creation of River Authorities in Texas in 1917.

Another extended drought occurred in the 1950s, resulting in the eventual construction of Lake Houston, Lake Livingston, and finally Lake Conroe to provide raw surface water for South East Texas and primarily the Houston Metroplex. It is important to bear in mind that legitimate climate records have only been kept, in South East Texas, for a little over 100 years according to the National Weather Service. So therefore, it is somewhat sketchy to base any concrete predictions concerning climate change on such a relatively small amount of data.

Regardless of the argument, South East Texas finds itself entering the third year of what may be a prolonged drought and summer is only a few short months away.

Lake Conroe continues to suffer from the lack of significant rainfall in its relatively small 440 square mile watershed. Lake level remains at nearly 3 feet below normal pool elevation (201 msl), and is registering at 198.20 msl. No storm-water releases from the Dam have made from Lake Conroe since May of 2010.

Lake Livingston is at 1/3 of a foot above normal at 131.34 msl and TRA is discharging 2,000 cfs from the Dam. This is an obvious result of the massive 17,000 square mile drainage area feeding runoff into the “Big” Lake.

For more information, as always, go to:

www.sjra.net for Lake Conroe, or

www.trinityra.org for Lake Livingston

Rain dances are appreciated!