Travis up 30ft in 36hrs and still going.....crazy

Still more rain set to fall today with chance of heavy showers predicted tomorrow through Saturday

Wow

What kind of water rise is expected in Lake McQueeney?

3AgDad81 said:

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What kind of water rise is expected in Lake McQueeney?

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I wouldn't expect too much... Canyon is a flood control reservoir. It's only got 2 pretty small gates and the rest of the water is stored in the flood pool unless it reaches the emergency spillway, which we all know is uncontrolled. It's only 2 ft into the flood pool this morning and the gage at Sattler is only showing 98 cfs downstream of the dam.

https://txpub.usgs.gov/txwaterdashboard/index.html

https://waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/individual/canyon



Regarding another comment about how fast Lake Travis rose... That is truly nothing short of impressive. However looks like they're only releasing 25,000 cfs. At these lake levels they're authorized to go as high as 30,000cfs depending on various downstream conditions at three downstream control points:

• Austin 33.0ft 30,000cfs
• Bastrop 27.2 ft 45,000cfs
• Columbus 35.5 ft 50,000cfs

https://www.lcra.org/water/floods/pages/key-elevations-for-lake-travis-during-floods.aspx

They're below the max flows at the Austin gage, and well below at Bastrop and Columbus, though their releases haven't gotten to Bastrop, much less Columbus.

None as of now, I grew up out there and my parents still live on the lake. Canyon was built for this purpose. If we continue to have large rains in the North Guadalupe Basin then I could see another 02 type flood due to Canyon overflowing but we'd need a lot more rain.

Oh, are we doing Lake LBJ Pics?

This house is across the street from the 4th hole of Legends. The house itself is 80-100 yards from the riverbank. The boathouse roof is easily 10 feet (probably more like 13 feet) above the regular water line.

Reporting that Llano River is expected to crest at same level as yesterday today

Any thoughts on how they will manage the Guadalupe out of Canyon this winter with the full up?

LRHF said:

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Any thoughts on how they will manage the Guadalupe out of Canyon this winter with the full up?

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They are going to let it fill for awhile unless it dumps on the Guadalupe above Canyon the next few days. Then they will start slowly realeasing water if needed over a few week time period

Someone please help me out with a question...most recent Lake Travis level was 697'. The top of the dam is reportedly 750'. What do these numbers refer to...is the lake presently 697 ft at its deepest point, or is that number in reference to feet above sea level? If the former was surprised the lake was anywhere near that deep. The elevation for Austin is around 489 ft above sea level, so the sea level number for the lake doesn't seem to make sense either.

TIA

It's feet above sea level.

Travis is currently listed as 100% full at 697.47 feet (depth, not sea level). Correction IT IS ELEVATION.

Water Data for Texas

Perhaps more concerning: Buchanan is listed at 100% Full, up from 87.3% two days ago. Inks is 100% full, up from 92.8% two days ago. Then, Marble Falls is full.

LBJ is only at 88.7% but I'm guessing that's going up considering all the Llano and Colorado flow we've seen.

They are in the process of opening more flood gates at Buchanan. So I'd expect all the lakes to continue to go up

When it comes to lakes used for flood control, there is "full" and there is "FULL". What they call full is usually 100% of the conservation pool elevation...which is usually the elevation where they try to keep the lake most of the time. There is also a flood pool, which is the elevation where things around the lake are flooding, but they don't have to do any emergency releases if they don't want to. Then, a few feet above flood pool is usually the elevation of the emergency spillway. For Canyon Lake, full conservation pool is 909'. Full flood pool is 943' and the emergency spillway is at 945'.

The emergency spillway elevation is 714 and change. So it can go up another 18 feet or so before it gets there. The top of the dam itself is 750.

txags92 said:

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The emergency spillway elevation is 714 and change. So it can go up another 18 feet or so before it gets there. The top of the dam itself is 750.

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That's right, I'm sure. But the lakes not 700' deep.

Right. As was said by others above, those #s are elevation above sea level. The dead pool for Travis is 535, so it is about 185 feet deep at the dam if the lake is at the emergency spillway. Under normal conditions it is about 150' deep at the dam.

Thanks for all the replies. I guess the sea level answer makes sense when you consider the lake is west of town(higher ground). Was just surprised the top of the dam was 250 ft or so higher than the reported elevation of the city. Again thanks for answering my rather elementary question.

Keep in mind... Travis/Mansfield is the only dam in the highland chain designed for flood protection. It was built to protect Austin. All of the others were built solely for power generation. The Colorado river and all of its smaller tributary rivers have a lot of elevation head. Those dams were designed specifically to use almost every inch of that elevation for electricity.

San Antonio is the same way. The elevation in the center of the city is 650' AMSL, but the elevation even as close in as Camp Bullis is over 1000' AMSL. Both cities sit along the edge of the Balcones Escarpment. When you go northwest from the rolling plains across the escarpment and up onto the Edwards Plateau, you gain a lot of elevation that you don't necessarily notice while driving.

Riddle me this, why is Whitney releasing almost 19,000 cfs right now? It's the only one on the USACE lakes in the Brazos basin with any substantial release. It's a few feet above conservation pool, but plenty of flood pool storage remains.

http://www.swf-wc.usace.army.mil/exec/execSum.htm

Tree Hugger said:

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Riddle me this, why is Whitney releasing almost 19,000 cfs right now? It's the only one on the USACE lakes in the Brazos basin with any substantial release. It's a few feet above conservation pool, but plenty of flood pool storage remains.

http://www.swf-wc.usace.army.mil/exec/execSum.htm

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because Possum Kingdom and Granbury above Whitney are both releasing water, and Whitney is six feet from being full.

http://www.swf-wc.usace.army.mil/cgi-bin/rcshtml.pl?page=Reports&report=fish


Brazos River Basin
Possum Kingdom
998.44
999.0
( -0.56 )
( -0.01 )
16387
-----
Granbury
690.68
692.7
( -2.02 )
( -1.54 )
23500
-----
Whitney
539.57
533.0
+6.57
+2.57
19009
571.0
Aquilla
549.55
537.5
+12.05
+2.70
3
556.0
Waco
474.88
462.0
+12.88
+7.44
583
500.0
Proctor
1161.37
1162.0
( -0.63 )
+1.96
0
1197.0
Belton
598.10
594.0
+4.10
+5.02
53
631.0
Stillhouse
622.46
622.0
+0.46
+5.34
1
666.0
Georgetown
797.54
791.0
+6.54
+6.35
0
834.0
Granger
511.49
504.0
+7.49
+4.11
0
528.0
Somerville
238.75
238.0
+0.75
+1.23
1
258.0
Limestone
359.85
363.0
( -3.15 )
+0.41
6
-----

Thanks, it helps seeing the rest of the basin.

Think of it this way as well, downtown Austin sits right on the banks of Lady Bird lake (ignoring the hill rise from the lake to say, 6th street). That lake is only 18 feet deep or so, it is pretty close to the original level of the river.

That is all downstream in the same river channel as Travis, and therefore down in elevation. The dam is like 12 miles as the crow flies from down town, so that is a 250 drop over 12 miles, or roughly 20 feet every mile, or in other words, the river drops 1 foot every 284 feet.

I'm sure that is fairly steep as far as water goes (considering the trinity drops like ~530 feet over ~250 miles from Dallas to Houston), but not that steep in the scheme of things.

STX Ag said:

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XpressAg09 said:

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Travis is currently listed as 100% full at 697.47 feet (depth, not sea level).

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No. IIRC max depth of travis is 200 +/-

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This is correct. I just checked my source and 697.47 is/was the ELEVATION of the top of the water level.

Does anyone happen to know if Willow City Loop is passable right now? Our land is on the road, and I'm quite certain that it wouldn't have been passable yesterday but I'm just curious if anyone knows. Or to ask another way, where do I find the status of low water crossings in Gillespie county?

For reference:

Try the local media or county's website.

I was just down at the Mansfield spillway. Only 4 gates open, but instead of the normal sedate trickle through the power generation gates, it is a frothing dark green torrent that resembles the river below Niagara Falls. The low water bridge below the dam that is usually 8-10 feet above "lake Austin/town lake" is now at the water's surfave below the dam.

I'm surprised there's not a legion of whitewater kayakers down there as there is some epic class 4-5 stuff going on.

The lake itself is shockingly full compared to what it has been. I boated on it all summer and it must be up 30-40 feet from the lows based off the water levels at landmarks on the lower end of the lake.

Aggie_3 said:

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Reporting that Llano River is expected to crest at same level as yesterday today

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Link to this report?

LBJ was about 2 feet lower than normal operating level this morning. From about 1 pm yesterday thru this morning the level went down from crest to lower than normal.

Just got back from LBJ from recovering and cinching up what we can at our place. We're about 1-2 miles downstream of where Llano and Colorado merge, close to Lookout Mountain. Lost 3 jet skis and a boat (completely gone) but house sits up high and was still about 8-10 feet from the crest. Dock is in fairly decent shape. Lotta debris.

So technically, it isn't elevation above sea level, but elevation above the survey benchmark NAVD88 +0.6'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Vertical_Datum_of_1988

Also, you aren't far off about the releases from Mansfield Dam being like Niagara Falls. Right now they are releasing about 28000 CFS and normal flow over Niagara Falls is 85000 CFS. It is a lot of water. However, for reference, during Harvey, Lake Houston was releasing 400,000 CFS at the peak. That was an inordinate amount of water.