Our Pretty Lake

[OleRed]

Hotest summer on record, worst drought in 70 years, http://www.olered.com/LakeHefner.html

[dorelse]

Wow.  Is the lake even usable any more?

Hate to say it, but you guys need a tropical storm or 2 (or 3)...

[Eric_Michael]

Looks like a great opportunity to go look for all those items lost over the side!

[MarkS]

That IS sad, Red!  We went through a bad drought here a few years back, but not THAT bad.  Maybe we all need to start doing a rain dance for TX/OK area?  Hope it gets better by next spring buddy.  (Doesn't look good for recovering this year, right?)

[OleRed]

Thats right Mark, it's going to be a slow recovery.  The city of okc has a contract with a town upstream of the river about 80 miles, from where water is diverted into this lake, they have opened a gate up there to let some water come down the river, but they said also, that the river bed is so dry, and that it will soak up so much water it will take about 5 days to get any of that water into this lake.  They can't fill the lake, just put some in it to help keep up with household use.

Just My Luck ... I was on the waiting list for 6 years to get a big covered slip at this lake, and when I finally got it,  last October, the water began receeding, been going down ever since ... maybe I should give up my slip, then we will have some rain.

[Jerry]

Some other town controls your water supply?
That sounds like Chinatown.

[CVX Fever]

Interesting all the boats people let lay on the lake bottom versus just pulling them out.

[Grinder]

That's too bad, we have just the opposite up here in ND! But on the upside it should be a good time to pick up a lake cabin.

[OleRed]

Some other town controls your water supply?

Just for this lake Jerry, we have several lakes to provide water for the city, 6 of them I think, but only two of them don't depend on run-off to be filled, water has to be channeled into this one from the north Canadian river, it stay's up when the river is running, and the other has water pumped in it from two other lakes, and thats amazing, two 60" lines pumping over 100 miles, 140 thousand gallons a minute.

[n0ukf]

Looks like a good time to dredge any problem areas. A few years ago Warroad had their river channel on Lake of the Woods dredged in the dead of winter, one hi-hoe cutting a channel through the ice, one digging the mud out. Much cheaper than hiring a dredging barge to come up and do it in the summer.

[75starflight]

I hope you will get as lucky as we did in nebraska a couple of years ago when our biggest lake Lake MCCONAUGHY Was very low to the point that they were saying it was going to take 5 years to refill it. it ended up only taking 6 months to refill thanks to mother nature and some extreme amounts of rain and snow in the rockies.

[Bayflite73]

So sad! Hopefully next year will be better.

[n0ukf]

Lake MCCONAUGHY Was very low to the point that they were saying it was going to take 5 years to refill it. it ended up only taking 6 months to refill

Never underestimate the power of nature to bounce back. The media is well known for underestimating nature.

[84carlson]

That?s sad, isn't it amazing here in Nebraska we have had flooding all summer long, they say it will take 30 years before the Missouri river banks recover from the damaged caused by the flooding. 

[n0ukf]

Last night I looked at lake level data and was surprised to see that in 1940 Devils Lake (ND) was 50+ feet lower than it is today. There's also record of it being near this current level in or before the 1800s.