Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Drought Update

Drought Status: Alarm
Barton Springs: near 50 cfs (the information is currently not available as of 11/25)
Lovelady well: 182.5 ft (depth to water)

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Drought Status Update--Alarm Stage Drought

Drought Stage: Alarm (yes, we're still in it)
Barton Springs: ~53 cfs 10-day average (and declining)
Lovelady Well: 184.5 ft depth to water and rising

Above-average rainfall for September and October have generated some modest recharge and helped improve drought conditions. We down-graded our drought status from Critical to Alarm on October 22, 2009. Barton Springs is flowing at near average conditions and the Lovelady well has been slowly rising about 0.3 ft/day. At that rate, the Lovelady water level might be above its Alarm threshold (175.0 ft) by mid to late December.

However, a word of caution that we are still not completely out of drought conditions as our Lovelady well indicates. We still need more above-average rainfall to completely lift us out of drought. Onion Creek is still not flowing substantially and we need to have more rainfall to generate more recharge that will help us to avoid dipping back into drought conditions by next summer.