{"id":37255,"date":"2014-06-11T11:01:45","date_gmt":"2014-06-11T16:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=37255"},"modified":"2014-07-02T11:17:21","modified_gmt":"2014-07-02T16:17:21","slug":"as-highland-lakes-near-record-low-will-they-ever-fill-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2014\/06\/11\/as-highland-lakes-near-record-low-will-they-ever-fill-again\/","title":{"rendered":"As Highland Lakes Near Record Low, Will They Ever Fill Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

Photo by REUTERS \/JOSHUA LOTT \/LANDOV<\/p>

A man walks along Lake Travis after water receded during a drought in Austin, Texas September 10, 2011.<\/p><\/div>\n

The combined storage of the Highland Lakes is expected to approach its record low \u2013 30 percent full \u2013 by the end of this summer. After that, forecasters say, the\u00a0El Ni\u00f1o<\/a>\u00a0weather pattern could bring some relief. But how much rain would it take to get them full again?<\/p>\n

The total volume of water in the Highland Lakes, the main reservoir for a million people in and around Austin, fell to its\u00a0lowest level since 1952<\/a>\u00a0(during Texas\u2019 multi-year drought of record) in September 2013. Water flowing into the Highland Lakes\u00a0hit record lows<\/a>\u00a0— just\u00a0ten percent the annual average — in 2011, Texas’ driest year on record.<\/p>\n

Historically, low levels like the ones we’re seeing now have been corrected by massive rain events.<\/p>\n

The last time the lakes were full was 2007, after\u00a019 inches of rain fell in just 6 hours<\/a>\u00a0over Marble Falls, known as the ‘Marble Falls Rain Bomb.’ The drought of record in the 1950\u2019s also ended with\u00a0massive floods<\/a>, and in\u00a01981\u00a0storms dumped up to 11 inches of rain in around three hours in the Memorial Day floods<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If torrential rain were to bring a swift end to the Central Texas drought, it would need to drop between 15 and 20 inches over a fairly wide area of the Hill Country according to Bob Rose, a meteorologist for the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA). But many factors would influence how much rainfall actually makes it to the lakes.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

Dylan Baddour\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

The public boat ramp at Cypress Creek Park on Lake Travis has been out of use since the water receded past its end in 2011. Since then, the entire lagoon on which the park is situated has dried.<\/p><\/div>\n

Projections <\/a>by the\u00a0LCRA put combined storage somewhere around 30 percent by September, but LCRA meteorologist Rose says chances are \u201cpretty low\u201d that the lakes would fall below 30 percent, a threshold that would trigger the most severe water restrictions<\/a> in Central Texas.<\/p>\n

“Even if the weather stays dry and we don’t see any rain all summer, we’ll probably stay just over that 30 percent going in to September,” said Rose.\u00a0The lakes are\u00a0currently 39 percent full<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Climate Prediction Center forecasts an 80 percent chance<\/a> of El Ni\u00f1o this fall, a global weather pattern which often brings above-average rains to most of Texas.<\/p>\n

El Ni\u00f1o is a weather pattern triggered by warming in the tropical Pacific Ocean. It last occurred in 2009 and usually happens every two to four years. Conditions were mounting for El Ni\u00f1o in 2012 but the threshold was never reached, making Rose optimistic that it will happen this year.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s good news for farms, industry and more than 1 million people in and around Austin who rely on water from Lake Travis and Buchanan, collectively known as the Highland Lakes<\/a>. Other forecasters aren’t sure that El Ni\u00f1o will be a beneficial one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If the lakes fall bellow 30 percent combined capacity, the LCRA would declare a drought worse the Texas\u2019 drought of record, cutting water supply for non-essential uses and instating mandatory 20 percent curtailment by industrial, agricultural and municipal customers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say based on history of previous El Ni\u00f1o events that I think much of Texas is going to see a change in the weather, heading toward a pattern of near-to-above-normal rainfall beginning in September and going through the winter months,” said Rose.<\/p>\n

Dylan Baddour is a reporting intern with StateImpact Texas.\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The combined storage of the Highland Lakes is expected to approach its record low \u2013 30 percent full \u2013 by the end of this summer. After that, forecasters say, the\u00a0El Ni\u00f1o\u00a0weather pattern could bring some relief. But how much rain would it take to get them full again? The total volume of water in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[58],"tags":[61,31],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37255"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37255"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37269,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37255\/revisions\/37269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}