Recent rains bring little drought relief
July 16, 2012
Recent thunderstorms have brought some much needed relief to Central Texas, but have done very little to fill the Highland Lakes and relieve the prolonged drought.
Because June was so dry, most of the recent rain that fell upstream of Austin soaked into the ground instead of flowing to the tributaries that feed lakes Travis and Buchanan, the region’s water supply reservoirs. This weekend’s heavy storms around the Austin area brought localized flooding, but fell downstream of Travis and Buchanan. The lakes remain slightly less than half full, and it will take a long stretch of rain to fill them up and end the drought.
June was an exceptionally dry month across most of South and Central Texas. Austin recorded just 0.06 inches of rain in June, making it the fourth driest June on record. The lack of rain brought most of the tributaries that feed the lakes to a trickle and significantly reduced the amount of water flowing into the lakes, known as inflows. Slightly more than 12,000 acre-feet of inflows were recorded in the Highland Lakes in June. That is about 7 percent of average for the month of June. For the year, there has been a little more than 310,000 acre-feet of inflows into the Highland Lakes, which is about 56 percent of average. During last year’s record dry weather, inflows were roughly 10 percent average.
“The lakes remain slightly less than half full, and it will take a long stretch of rain to fill them up and end the drought.” |
While June was a very dry month, July and August are not expected to be nearly as dry. High pressure in the upper atmosphere is forecast to set up over the eastern Rockies and the Plains states and not directly over Texas. This will allow occasional disturbances to track west out of the Gulf of Mexico and produce scattered showers. While summer temperatures will be hot, a repeat of last summer’s record hot and dry pattern is unlikely. The National Hurricane Center is forecasting near normal hurricane activity this summer and fall in the Atlantic basin. Gulf of Mexico surface temperatures remain unusually warm and may potentially fuel tropical storm development. In the tropical Pacific Ocean, surface temperatures are now slightly above normal and close to the threshold for El Niño. Most forecast models indicate the Pacific will
continue to warm, with an El Niño developing by late summer and lasting through winter. El Niños typically cause above normal rainfall across Texas during the fall and winter months, and most long-range forecasts indicate a trend toward above normal rain across Texas beginning in October.
For more information on the ongoing drought or the conditions of the Highland Lakes, please go to LCRA's drought page.
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