Lake Livingston--Texas

[Seadoobuddy]

Hey BJ - Before jumping to conclusions here. I wasn't the original one to post that equation. Scooper did in 1 post (#42)before me. I was just repeating it as in "for real"????

Yeah I couldn't believe it either.

 

[scooper77515]

Well, figured I would jump in here again.

With the ground as dry as it was, all that rain went straight to the ditches, into the creeks, and into the lake. So just a little rain brought our lake up a bunch!

On a positive note, they finally opened our boat launches up again yesterday.

Here is the site the keeps track of our water depth.

http://houston.uslakes.info/Level.asp

Note that each time it rains, even if only a 1/4", 1/2" or a full inch, the water comes up for about 3 or 5 days straight afterwards as it makes its way to the lake. The last rain we got was on 11/27, and look at how much the water has come up since then (7/10 of a FOOT!) and that was with .93" of rain.

We have only had about 4" of rain since the summer, and yet the lake has come up 4.9 FEET, just over the past month and a half or so.

Here is a pic from mid-september compared to day before yesterday...

 

[bigJake]

Hey BJ - Before jumping to conclusions here. I wasn't the original one to post that equation. Scooper did in 1 post (#42)before me. I was just repeating it as in "for real"????

Yeah I couldn't believe it either.

The crow flies at midnight

 

[scooper77515]

Also, keep in mind that when the first rain broke the drought, the lake was only 2/3 the width it is now. So that first rain brought it up more than the more recent rains are. But it is still coming back up fast.

When they cut lake Conroe north of us, they expected it to take 2-3 years to fill up, but it filled up in 90 days. They never had a chance to get all the heavy equipment out of the deep end near the dam before it filled, so there are some great fishing "reefs" under there nowadays.

It really is amazing how little rain it takes to bring the water level up on smaller lakes.

 

[Seadoobuddy]

Scooper - I guess the experts were a bit off in their calculations to fill Lake Conroe....by over 2 1/2 yrs.

....The Bluebirds ate worms in the morning

 

[Michael211_2000]

Nice that they're starting to fill up some... suxs that it's too cold to use them now. My SeaDoo is already winterized, supposed to be a pretty good freeze coming next week. We can only hope that next summer we have a bit more normal rainfall so they lakes will stay up and usable! I only got to go out 5 times this year before Livinston finally got too low (I know Lakes Conroe and Houston fell even faster!). I'm going to drive up to Lake Livinston and check out the Blanchard boat ramps either later today or Friday I think, just to see what it's lookin like.

ps. They put my county back under a 90 day fireban Monday night. Apparently too many people were burning outside and with the blowing winds and dry/dead brush everwhere they were loosing control of their fires. I had just enough time out of the ban to burn up 6 large piles of limbs around my house (1 at a time, with buckets of water on hand and mostly I lit them up when it was already raining to keep them from getting too hot... those piles had been here since last March; I'm amazed how much more space there is in my yard now LOL!).

- Michael

 

[scooper77515]

I have been known to jetski off Surfside beach on Christmas day, so cold isn't much of an issue for me.

I would just like a day in the upper 60s or 70s, just so I can hit the beaches with my metal detector while the water is still down, and find some stuff.

We only went out 5 times this year, as well. One time was at Livingston RIGHT before it got too low, and one time on L. Houston we ended up towing a buddy back on his first trip out in new-to-him boat. So only four trips.... Been a sad year for boating.

 

[Seadoobuddy]

Hey Scooper - i just read an article that in Germany in an "almost empty" lake due to drought they found a 4000 lb bomb from England (I think) and a 475 lb bomb from USA. both unexploded.
I guess they hit the water just right and didn't explode.

Save the Alamo.

 

[scooper77515]

The Alamo is pretty safe, for now. Unless Ozzy Ozbourne comes around!

What Glastron do you have?

My current boat is Glastron GX185, 2003 model. Love it!

 

[Rabid]

the lake shot up about a foot the other day!! Im going to try and put the boat in tomorrow. The ski still has to wait till the water comes up another foot. Two weeks ago a big storm hit around Dallas and it took that long to get the slug of water down the river to the lake.

 

[Michael211_2000]

Bout time! Still too cold for my likings though I'll pass. LOL!

When I went up there the other weekend (2 weekends ago I think it was) the level was still so low the Blanchard boat ramp was landlocked. There was grass growing pretty well on the lake bed, and the water's edge had formed a 10 foot wide sand berm (from the wave action I guess)... it was pretty neat looking. I had lunch at the Indian Hills Marina; why they haven't taken this opportunity to pick up all their "lost" pier tires I have no idea, the are around their pier is just littered with tires from their pier and all they needed to do was walk out there and pick them up! Ughhh!

Thanks for the update though Rabid.

- Michael

 

[Seadoobuddy]

Rabid - why can you take the boat but not the ski out onto the lake?
I would think that the boat requires more draft than the ski.

 

[Rabid]

The boat is at the end of the dock and the ski lift is up by the bulkhead. just before the ski the lake bottom comes up about a foot and the waterline is at the upper edge of that rise. A front is going to stall out and give us some rain over the next three days.

 

[Rabid]

Lake level

 

[Rabid]

Merry Christmas!!!!

Lake is up to 129.1 and still climbing. 131 is normal level. the lake level gained 2 feet in about 10 days to 2 weeks

 

[aerodagarse]

Lake Livingston

So they are going to draw it down once and say, Look we fixed it

What does drawdowns as needed mean? Every 10 years like on some that I have seen the plans? Or worse - never? Just like they have done in so many other places. Hopefully one day theyll get a clue. It isnt so hard to draw down a lake and let it rise naturally again every year, or every other at most. And the hunting would be 10x better, and consistent.

 

[Rabid]

The draw down on the lakes in the area are from the rice farmers and the chemical companies who purchase the water. The city of Houston also gets water from the lake which is pumped over to lake Houston from the Trinity river close to Dayton. Normally the river can handle the load but this year we had a really bad drought. We were short about 30 inches of rain for the year.

 

[Seadoobuddy]

We have a drawdown on my lake every Fall. It lets the lakefront owners clean up their beach/shoreline a lot easier. But if you are late getting your boat/ski off the lift, your in for a bit of a hassle launching it.

 

[Rabid]

There is a bunch of boats on Lake Conroe where the owners pulled them off of the lifts and just beached them. Then the water dropped even lower and they have been just stuck there till it comes back up. I think they are still seven feet low. Lake Conroe gets their water from the San Jacinto river which is more of a westerly direction and the Trinity river collection basin covers a northern area. Out west is in a really bad drought where Livingston has capitalized on 10+ inches total of rain over a huge area all the way up past Dallas. Conroe has less than 5in im guessing in a lot smaller area..almost nothing. The distance between the two lakes is about 50 miles +.

 

[scooper77515]

We have had lots of rain in the past two months, and Lake Houston is actually OVER full right now. The numbers say we are still 1' below full pool of 44', but our fixed dock at Deussen Park has the slip catwalks under water right now. So we are about a foot higher than what us boaters call "normal".

Here is what we had this last week...compared to what it looked like in September.

 

[Rabid]

Scooper thats good news!!!

Have you had the boat out yet?...

 

[scooper77515]

Yup, last sunday. Weather was low 70s and calm, actually had nice fog on it in the morning. Cleared up to mostly sunny. Too cold to get wet, but we at least got to take our new puppy out for her first trip.

She did very good, and is destined to be a water dog!

Then it got windy, chopped up, and i got home and re-winterized it in time for two days of freeze.

 

[Rabid]

Watch out on the lake for floating logs. When the water level dropped down it loosened up a lot of stumps. Now that the water has come back up they have been floating up against our bulkhead all weekend. I was able to get a crappy picture of one that was 18 inches in diameter and about 12 foot long that floated just below the surface. I marked some lines to get an idea where it was in the pic.

 

[Seadoobuddy]

Wow, it's bad enough running over that with a jet drive, I pity the person that hits it with a stern drive.

Did ya pull it out of the water?

 

[scooper77515]

Down here on lake houston, we are cleaner than ever.

To take advantage of the lowest water ever, a bunch of guys went around and cut all the stumps they could get to and loaded them up and hauled them out, at least on the south half of the lake (my end). They estimate that they hauled off between 80-90% of all the stumps.

Pretty much anything they could get to by foot or shallow water while water was down 6-1/2', they cut near the sand and hauled them out.