{"id":17034,"date":"2013-10-24T12:44:06","date_gmt":"2013-10-24T17:44:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=17034"},"modified":"2013-10-24T12:46:03","modified_gmt":"2013-10-24T17:46:03","slug":"waurika-lake-water-levels-at-record-lows-even-after-recent-rainfall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2013\/10\/24\/waurika-lake-water-levels-at-record-lows-even-after-recent-rainfall\/","title":{"rendered":"Waurika Lake Water Levels at Record Lows, Even After Recent Rainfall"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"module image alignright mceTemp\" id=\"attachment_17040\" style=\"width: 300px;\"><a class=\"fancybox\" title=\"\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2013\/10\/NewDroughtPic.jpg\" rel=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-17040\" alt=\"NewDroughtPic\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2013\/10\/NewDroughtPic-300x199.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">U.S. Drought Monitor<\/p>\n<\/div><p>Parts of southwestern Oklahoma are <a title=\"DroughtLink\" href=\"http:\/\/droughtmonitor.unl.edu\/Home\/StateDroughtMonitor.aspx?OK\" target=\"_blank\">still dealing<\/a> with extreme and exceptional drought conditions, and Waurika Lake \u2014 which provides drinking water to Lawton and surrounding communities \u2014 is suffering badly as a result.<\/p><p><em>The Lawton Constitution <\/em><a title=\"ConstitutionLink\" href=\"http:\/\/www.swoknews.com\/news-top\/area\/item\/11104-waurika-lake-still-dangerously-low\" target=\"_blank\">reports water\u00a0levels<\/a> were at record lows this week, and explains what it would take for the lake to become full again:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On Tuesday, the important area water source was standing at just 44 percent of its conservation pool. While that amount to 82,000 acre feet of water, enough water to cover 82,000 acres a foot deep, it would take rainfall equivalent to 100,000 acre feet to fill the lake up.<\/p><\/blockquote><p><!--more-->The paper reports it would take 3.5 inches of rain across more than 550 square miles to do the job, which certainly can&#8217;t be counted on.<\/p><p>A healthy rain last week couldn&#8217;t keep the lake from setting record low water levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A healthy rain last week couldn&#8217;t keep the lake from setting record low water levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":17040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[423,331,427],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17034"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17034"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17034\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17049,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17034\/revisions\/17049"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}