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Originally Posted by jeffk
"Lake Winnipesaukee does not have a single source; it is a naturally glacially formed body of water primarily fed by ancient underground springs and dozens of relatively small streams and tributaries.
Primary Inflows: Eighty-three relatively small streams and rivers drain into the lake's massive 215,133-acre watershed. Major inflows include the Gunstock, Merrymeeting, Melvin, and Red Hill Rivers."
I have heard that the primary water input to the lake is the underground springs.
While there has certainly been a lot of development along the shoreline and immediately nearby, the watershed extends out for miles and development away from the lake is, relatively, much less. The streams that feed the lake are probably still delivering the same amounts of water although that overall amount is probably impossible to know.
Shoreline runoff has definitely increased. What it's overall volume contribution to lake level is, is speculation.
I think the dam could be managed smarter. Given the fickleness of mother nature, it's never going to be a perfect process but the extremes could be smoothed out. First principle, you can't make it rain so we should retain more water, longer, SHORT of bad shoreline erosion levels, to anticipate the possibility of a couple of months of dry weather. Second principle, we need to anticipate major storms and drawdown enough ahead of the the storm so it doesn't rise the lake to exceed levels that cause shoreline erosion. Dam response AFTER the storm is complicated by downstream conditions.
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Answered previously:
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Isn't the dam under some control 24 hours a day?
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In the event of a torrential rain anywhere within the 'Winnipesaukee Basin', fine-tuning the dam outflow could be done for
some short period of time (gained through experience).
Since I've been observing the lake my entire (long) lifetime, I see that the immense sizes of today's boats has, over time, stressed management of the lake level.
IMHO, spring's boating erosion of the shoreline should take precedence over oversized boat inconvenience.
The muddied shoreline I've been watching extending itself outwards for 70 years at this same location is testimony; not to mention, algae growth that didn't exist back then.
Micro-plants grew like green peach fuzz on our moored boats' bottoms, but nothing like the algae masses we see while peering off our dock on Winter Harbor.
