Lake Level rapidly rising!

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wayne gustaveson

wayne gustaveson

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The lake came up 1.3 feet in one day. Yesterday the level was 3591.44. Today it is 3592.71. That's a huge rise.
Expect the same all week. If shore camping make sure to readjust your boat mooring lines at lest twice a day.

This reminds me an event that happened years ago under similar circumstances. Someone was going out on the lake for a week and parked their car on Lone Rock beach near shore. When he returned a week later his car was mostly under water. Plan ahead. Be careful and have fun.
 
Surprising to see that Colorado and Green River flows are down a little bit today (data available on USBR Operations website, link on WW home page). San Juan River still ramping up. Of course Green and San Juan controlled by USBR at Flaming Gorge and Navajo dams, resoectively; only Colorado is unregulated. Bring it!
 
wayne gustaveson said:
The lake came up 1.3 feet in one day. Yesterday the level was 3591.44. Today it is 3592.71. That's a huge rise.
Expect the same all week. If shore camping make sure to readjust your boat mooring lines at lest twice a day.

This reminds me an event that happened years ago under similar circumstances. Someone was going out on the lake for a week and parked their car on Lone Rock beach near shore. When he returned a week later his car was mostly under water. Plan ahead. Be careful and have fun.
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The last three days (June 9-11) have seen rises exceeding a foot a day--a huge rise, as you say Wayne--and more ahead. Yesterday was the biggest rise at 1.27 feet. So I looked back in the record to see the longest sustained 1+ foot rise on the lake... The best candidate years for that would have been a big spring runoff when the lake is already low (like this year). A few years jump out as the longest streaks of 1+ foot/day:

2011 - June 9-16... 8.6 foot rise in 8 days, maximum rise of 1.13 feet in one day
2005 - May 23-June 2... 14.6-foot rise in 12 days, maximum rise of 1.50 feet in one day
1993 - May 19-June 5... 19.5-foot rise in 18 days, maximum rise of 1.21 feet in one day
1973 - May 20-28 and June 13-17... 12.2 feet in 9 days, then 5.3 feet in 5 days, maximum 1.26 feet
1968 - June 2-11... 13.5 feet in 10 days, maximum rise of 1.54 feet

(So the biggest one day rise ever--except as noted in the next paragraph--was 1.54 feet in June 1968. To put that in perspective, the 1.27-foot rise of 6-11-19 was only exceeded for about a week in 2005, and four days in 1968)

...And then there's 1964... which doesn't really count because the lake was only just beginning to fill. But from May 12 to August 16 that year, it rose from 3395 to 3490, 95 feet in one summer! And in one 6-day period (May 24-29), it rose 19.4 feet, with every day in that period over 3 feet, up to 3.40 feet.

All this to say, 2019 is already one of these historic few years of rapid lake level rise, so watch where you anchor your boat in the next few days and tighten those lines!
 
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JFR -- have you down loaded the water data into a spreadsheet so you can sort, slice and dice the data. Pretty tough to eyeball the data to captue the historical trends.
 
Trix said:
JFR -- have you down loaded the water data into a spreadsheet so you can sort, slice and dice the data. Pretty tough to eyeball the data to captue the historical trends.
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....pretty much. I don't have every piece of data downloaded, but have a spreadsheet that sorts the years by monthly and annual changes, volumes, max and min rise, inflows/outflows tied to key dates, etc... then I just keep adding pages when there's something specific I want to figure out. Then I've got my other database of beach locations and hiking access sorted by lake level in each canyon, tied to aerials I've downloaded from Google Earth, plus my own photos, also still a work in progress...

Anyway, it's a little bit of searching my own sliced and diced data, which makes looking into more detailed historic issues a lot easier...

It's either do that, or just watch baseball...
 
JFRCalifornia said:
....pretty much. I don't have every piece of data downloaded, but have a spreadsheet that sorts the years by monthly and annual changes, volumes, max and min rise, inflows/outflows tied to key dates, etc... then I just keep adding pages when there's something specific I want to figure out. Then I've got my other database of beach locations and hiking access sorted by lake level in each canyon, tied to aerials I've downloaded from Google Earth, plus my own photos, also still a work in progress...

Anyway, it's a little bit of searching my own sliced and diced data, which makes looking into more detailed historic issues a lot easier...

It's either do that, or just watch baseball...
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How do I get a copy? :)
At the least, would love to see camping sites page.
 
I'm still thinking the biggest runnoff days are yet to happen. As was mentioned, it's still pretty cold up at higher elevations. We haven't hit normal June temperatures yet. We keep seeing cold fronts roll through and slow the melt. We are getting a couple more in the next week.
 
JFRCalifornia said:
...still working on it, I'll let you know when I think it's ready for release... :)
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I have an old [from 1975] Lake Powell Boating Guide. We took it on evert trip from the 80's on and George would mark the water level and where we stayed on what dates and if it was a great, good, or marginal beach, of course for us boat camping was different than houseboat camping in the spots we were able to access. Hard to believe this book in 1975 cost $3.95.
 
Now we're getting into some historic territory with the lake level rise...

In the past 5 days (June 9-13), the lake has come up 5.95 feet. Except for in 1964, when the lake was just filling (and in the 3400 range), that's the 4th largest 5-day rise ever. The three larger ones were:

2005 - May 26-30 - 7.43 feet
1968 - May 6-10 - 7.06 feet
1973 - May 21-25 - 6.14 feet

This year is especially impressive, because lake levels were lower in 1968 and 2005 when their big jumps happened (roughly 3530 and 3580, respectively). In 1973, the lake was at about 3610 during it's quick rise. For more context, in 2005 the lake sustained a 1+ foot rise for 12 days, going up over 14 feet in that time. In 1993, the lake rose over 19 feet in 18 days.

Where did those years end up? The lake rose 37 feet in 1968, 58 feet in 1973, and 53 feet in 2005. In 1993, it came up 56 feet. So far this year, it's already come up 27 feet, and rising fast...

In terms of inflow volume, the 77,907 cfs recorded on June 11 was the highest since June 2011. Before that, you'd have to go back to 1997 to top that number... And we are just getting started, since there's still a lot of snow up there...
 
JFRCalifornia said:
Now we're getting into some historic territory with the lake level rise...

In the past 5 days (June 9-13), the lake has come up 5.95 feet. Except for in 1964, when the lake was just filling (and in the 3400 range), that's the 4th largest 5-day rise ever. The three larger ones were:

2005 - May 26-30 - 7.43 feet
1968 - May 6-10 - 7.06 feet
1973 - May 21-25 - 6.14 feet

This year is especially impressive, because lake levels were lower in 1968 and 2005 when their big jumps happened (roughly 3530 and 3580, respectively). In 1973, the lake was at about 3610 during it's quick rise. For more context, in 2005 the lake sustained a 1+ foot rise for 12 days, going up over 14 feet in that time. In 1993, the lake rose over 19 feet in 18 days.

Where did those years end up? The lake rose 37 feet in 1968, 58 feet in 1973, and 53 feet in 2005. In 1993, it came up 56 feet. So far this year, it's already come up 27 feet, and rising fast...

In terms of inflow volume, the 77,907 cfs recorded on June 11 was the highest since June 2011. Before that, you'd have to go back to 1997 to top that number... And we are just getting started, since there's still a lot of snow up there...
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Excellent summary of the unusual inflow events that are now occurring. This is much better than waiting for the lake to come up 3 feet as it did last year. We are hoping for a strong finish to the aggressive inflows that are happening now.
 
How are those 2005, 1968 and 1973 record numbers tie in with those insane figures of For June 14th, 2019? Snowpack is 949% of avg, TotalPrecip is 123.00% of avg? That is a lot of snow above average. I would be eying any warm-spell very nervously anywhere downstream.
And is it possible or even normal that a lot of that snowpack could stay up there if it stays cold enough?
 
Bjorn Steller said:
How are those 2005, 1968 and 1973 record numbers tie in with those insane figures of For June 14th, 2019? Snowpack is 949% of avg, TotalPrecip is 123.00% of avg? That is a lot of snow above average. I would be eying any warm-spell very nervously anywhere downstream.
And is it possible or even normal that a lot of that snowpack could stay up there if it stays cold enough?
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I would guess the least of the concerns would have to do with Lake Powell. The lake is low enough to take any kind of fast rise that might happen from a very rapid runoff if it suddenly gets hot in the mountains. But I'd be more concerned about local flooding in the mountains and downstream areas above the reservoirs, Lake Powell in particular. But you're right, we're pretty much in uncharted territory in terms of the snowpack and runoff potential, especially this late in the season...
 
JFRCalifornia said:
Now we're getting into some historic territory with the lake level rise...

In the past 5 days (June 9-13), the lake has come up 5.95 feet. Except for in 1964, when the lake was just filling (and in the 3400 range), that's the 4th largest 5-day rise ever. The three larger ones were:

2005 - May 26-30 - 7.43 feet
1968 - May 6-10 - 7.06 feet
1973 - May 21-25 - 6.14 feet

This year is especially impressive, because lake levels were lower in 1968 and 2005 when their big jumps happened (roughly 3530 and 3580, respectively). In 1973, the lake was at about 3610 during it's quick rise. For more context, in 2005 the lake sustained a 1+ foot rise for 12 days, going up over 14 feet in that time. In 1993, the lake rose over 19 feet in 18 days.

Where did those years end up? The lake rose 37 feet in 1968, 58 feet in 1973, and 53 feet in 2005. In 1993, it came up 56 feet. So far this year, it's already come up 27 feet, and rising fast...

In terms of inflow volume, the 77,907 cfs recorded on June 11 was the highest since June 2011. Before that, you'd have to go back to 1997 to top that number... And we are just getting started, since there's still a lot of snow up there...
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The biggest years ever was 1983 and 84. The lake was so full before the runoff they couldn’t let the water out fast enough. I bet if they needed the water in Powell ,those years would the record hands down
 
Tim Fortier said:
The biggest years ever was 1983 and 84. The lake was so full before the runoff they couldn’t let the water out fast enough. I bet if they needed the water in Powell ,those years would the record hands down
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Right, no question--those two years were off the charts. In those two years, the inflow from April through August was on the order of 15 million acre feet (MAF) each year, but because the lake was pretty much full already, over 10 MAF was released during each summer! If we had that kind of inflow this year, using this year's outflow amounts (normal summer releases, in conformance with an normal protocol), the net inflow would have been 11.2 MAF, instead of the 4-5 MAF it actually was in 1983-84.

Using the April 2019 starting point of 3568, if you add 11.2 MAF, you'd end up with a lake level of at about 3670, or a 102-foot rise! I don't think we'll see anything quite like that this year, but it will still be impressive...
 
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