Water levels

[joey2665]

Originally Posted by MotorHead

https://www.boston.com/weather/weath...-massachusetts

So, how does this translate into lake water level next spring?

It’s doesn’t because NOAA in a nutshell said it had no idea what the expected precipitation is for the northeast this winter.


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[Descant]

I'm OK with a 2 foot band of full and low water BUT
It ought to be full on August 1 and low in December. I understand the difficulties, but major SNAFU in 2016 and again in 2020 is too frequent. It is bad enough that the lakes region economy suffers from Covid, but sending everybody elsewhere due to low water is a major problem for many businesses as well as local residents.

[Lakegeezer]

Over 2" of rain has fallen since yesterday (10/17) and the lake is up 1.3 inches in 24 hours. That is a LOT of water! Throughout the day, more nutrient rich runoff will bring up the level even more, but not enough to bring us back to normal.

[winterh]

Originally Posted by Lakegeezer

Over 2" of rain has fallen since yesterday (10/17) and the lake is up 1.3 inches in 24 hours. That is a LOT of water! Throughout the day, more nutrient rich runoff will bring up the level even more, but not enough to bring us back to normal.

Does a large amount of water quickly refilling the lake help the water quality by flushing out the bad stuff or does it ultimately hurt the water quality by bringing runoff?

[Biggd]

Originally Posted by winterh

Does a large amount of water quickly refilling the lake help the water quality by flushing out the bad stuff or does it ultimately hurt the water quality by bringing runoff?

I think heavy rain hurts water quality but water quality is hurt by drought conditions also.
In a perfect world occasional moderate rain is what's needed but we can't control the weather.

[Merrymeeting]

Originally Posted by winterh

Does a large amount of water quickly refilling the lake help the water quality by flushing out the bad stuff or does it ultimately hurt the water quality by bringing runoff?

Water clarity has been amazing for the last month or so, mostly due to lack of runoff. As has been noted, heavy rain washes more than just water into the lakes and you can see it in the water clarity.

I've been on one of the lakes water monitoring teams for some time, and the secchi disk readings always show shallower visibility after a storm (A secchi disk is a patterned disk that is lowered into the water until it can't be seen anymore. The clearer the water, the deeper the reading).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secchi...%20the%20water.

We've been getting some of the deepest readings I can remember up until the latest storms.