quote:Yes, LCRA manages 4 irrigation divisions (Garwood, Lakeside, Pierce Ranch and Gulf Coast) in the lower colorado river basin. Rice historically has been the primary crop river water was used to irrigate but other commodities like cotton, corn, sorghum and turfgrass/sod farms receive water. There are many users downstream that have water rights to the highland lakes/colorado river water. The LCRA started delivering water to farmers a little over a week ago. From what i understand minimal water is coming from the lakes at this time as most water being pumped is what is referred to as above normal flow of the river. There are many farmers who have a chance of making a crop/profit this year due to the water supply and not relying on crop insurance to survive.
Doesn't LCRA send a crapload of water down the Colorado to rice farmers or something? That's an unverified rumor I've heard people gripe about for years. Wondering when and if that's happened yet and how that affects lake levels?
Lake Travis water level
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144 Replies |
Last: 8 yr ago by Yuccadoo
honestly never thought Id see Travis full again. Im glad it is.
I didn't, I responded to two other folks that did it.
quote:This will the the first time in 4 years that LCRA has had enough water to sell to rice farmers. At least on the lower portion of the river anyway, not sure about north of 10. I'm currently building a 40k acre foot reservoir for them south of Wharton to store water so that the rice farmers and local ranchers will have a more readily available supply of water in the lean years.
Doesn't LCRA send a crapload of water down the Colorado to rice farmers or something? That's an unverified rumor I've heard people gripe about for years. Wondering when and if that's happened yet and how that affects lake levels?
quote:To be fair, he did use the moving goalpost term "climate change" instead of the old "global warming" term. He's not wrong - the climate does change. Pretty much daily at that.quote:
To use a single flood event as evidence that climate change isn't happening is moronic. I guess some folks just need a break from burning all those books that teach evolution.
Oh boy...
Global warming, however, is a total crock of sht and anybody with half a brain knows it.
quote:unfortunately that reservoir south of wharton will only help farmers in the gulf coast irrigation division (bay city area) but i suspect much more of that water will go to industrial needs than agriculture as it comes online. it wont do anything for farmers in Garwood or Eagle Lake, but it is a start at more stable water in the southern basin.quote:This will the the first time in 4 years that LCRA has had enough water to sell to rice farmers. At least on the lower portion of the river anyway, not sure about north of 10. I'm currently building a 40k acre foot reservoir for them south of Wharton to store water so that the rice farmers and local ranchers will have a more readily available supply of water in the lean years.
Doesn't LCRA send a crapload of water down the Colorado to rice farmers or something? That's an unverified rumor I've heard people gripe about for years. Wondering when and if that's happened yet and how that affects lake levels?
I believe the answer to your questions is LCRA. The American Statesman had an in depth piece after the study was done based on the study. This 10-15 years ago. A catastrophic flooding event would obviously cause serious damage around Lake Travis, but downstream in Austin property loss and human loss would probably be greater. In 1952, the Pedernales watershed had a rainfall event that caused Lake Travis to rise 44' in 11 hours and 57' in 24 hours. An event like that when the lake is st 681, like it is now, is a problem. It is not if, but when.
quote:The bolded is hyperbole!quote:agree. As a witness first hand of the '98 and '02 flooding it will happen again. The rapid development in the hill country has stripped a lot of the top soil down to the limestone or better asphalt roads. The drainage systems all point to the rivers as a catch all. It is not sustainable.
It is great to see Travis at this level, but it's primary purpose is a flood control lake. It has gone up and down many times over the decades. The Pedernales and Llano watersheds are a ticking time bomb for a future catastrophic flood that Lake Travis wiil probably not be able to handle. The resulting damage from a rainfall event such as the 1998 Guadulupe River flood would be of a magnitude that is difficult to imagine.
Do you mean to imply that flash floods like what occurred on the Blanco last year resulted from "rapid development"? That is just an ignorant statement, if not disingenuous as well. Whenever those amounts of water fall in such a short time-frame over the Texas Hill country, flash flooding will occur. The most effective safeguard I can think of to counteract the "threat" is the construction of multiple flood control dams throughout the watershed, but that is a very expensive process not likely to happen.
Don't think he was claiming that was the reason for floods.
Development is known to be a flood multiplier however.
Development is known to be a flood multiplier however.
quote:Climate change and global warming are far different phrases.quote:To be fair, he did use the moving goalpost term "climate change" instead of the old "global warming" term. He's not wrong - the climate does change. Pretty much daily at that.quote:
To use a single flood event as evidence that climate change isn't happening is moronic. I guess some folks just need a break from burning all those books that teach evolution.
Oh boy...
Global warming, however, is a total crock of sht and anybody with half a brain knows it.
The Earth goes through climate cycles, regardless of what humans do, this happens. Both sides of the global warming debate acknowledge this but argue over what hand humans play in it.
Also weather changes daily not climate, not sure if you were just trying to make a joke or didn't know the difference.
The Colorado basin has historically had major flooding problems long before there was any significant development. When there is 10-15-20 inches of rain, the volume of water is almost beyond human imagination. Most of the flood water coming into Lake Travis is coming from the rural areas of the Llano and Pedernales watersheds. Poor agriculture practices have caused more flooding than developments on those watersheds. Sheep and farming on thin soils were not good. Development in rural areas has actually been a good for creating habitat that prevent rapid run off.
quote:obviously when you have a huge rain event is going to cause flooding but to say it is ignorant or disingenuous to believe that removing fiels of top soil and covering them with millions of sqft of surface pavement and roof area that both tie into concrete drainage systems designed to shed water from urban areas into whatever creek or watershed it can as quickly as possible does not have a dramatic affect on the severity of the flooding then I don't know what to say.quote:The bolded is hyperbole!quote:agree. As a witness first hand of the '98 and '02 flooding it will happen again. The rapid development in the hill country has stripped a lot of the top soil down to the limestone or better asphalt roads. The drainage systems all point to the rivers as a catch all. It is not sustainable.
It is great to see Travis at this level, but it's primary purpose is a flood control lake. It has gone up and down many times over the decades. The Pedernales and Llano watersheds are a ticking time bomb for a future catastrophic flood that Lake Travis wiil probably not be able to handle. The resulting damage from a rainfall event such as the 1998 Guadulupe River flood would be of a magnitude that is difficult to imagine.
Do you mean to imply that flash floods like what occurred on the Blanco last year resulted from "rapid development"? That is just an ignorant statement, if not disingenuous as well. Whenever those amounts of water fall in such a short time-frame over the Texas Hill country, flash flooding will occur. The most effective safeguard I can think of to counteract the "threat" is the construction of multiple flood control dams throughout the watershed, but that is a very expensive process not likely to happen.
Yes, the area has always had flooding issues because of the rock base, the elevation changes and the resulting gullies and canyons, the type of heavy rapid rainfall events that can occur in the region due to the local climate and intense frontal activity and long lines of supercells that can form, and you get a lot of rapid aggregation and channelization of rainfall.
What is changing over time is that people, myself included, are very drawn to those canyons and streams with their shade trees and such, and you have boatloads of people living in them now, and building as if the water doesn't rise 20 or 30 feet in a few hours. To add to that, we in fact HAVE been covering thousands and thousands of acres of rolling farmland and fields with asphalt and concrete, and then channeling that flow into storm drains that very rapidly dump that water into creeks and rivers so most of us can continue going about our business in heavy rain, which makes flood control models and data obsolete every few years. In the last decade or so we have begun to attempt to mitigate this effect with attempts to capture and hold runoff in basins and small reservoirs that have outlets with limited flow rates in order to delay the surge of runoff into the natural creeks and rivers, and it has helped, but we have a lot of catching up to do, and at the rate we build new drainage and add new burden to existing systems we have trouble really planning and anticipating the effects of our development on drainage. Adding small reservoirs on major side creeks that only limit flow rate at the outlet is probably the best strategy to limit flooding on the main river, but you have to have undeveloped park space for them to fill up into in a flood event until they can slowly release down to regular flow rate.
What is changing over time is that people, myself included, are very drawn to those canyons and streams with their shade trees and such, and you have boatloads of people living in them now, and building as if the water doesn't rise 20 or 30 feet in a few hours. To add to that, we in fact HAVE been covering thousands and thousands of acres of rolling farmland and fields with asphalt and concrete, and then channeling that flow into storm drains that very rapidly dump that water into creeks and rivers so most of us can continue going about our business in heavy rain, which makes flood control models and data obsolete every few years. In the last decade or so we have begun to attempt to mitigate this effect with attempts to capture and hold runoff in basins and small reservoirs that have outlets with limited flow rates in order to delay the surge of runoff into the natural creeks and rivers, and it has helped, but we have a lot of catching up to do, and at the rate we build new drainage and add new burden to existing systems we have trouble really planning and anticipating the effects of our development on drainage. Adding small reservoirs on major side creeks that only limit flow rate at the outlet is probably the best strategy to limit flooding on the main river, but you have to have undeveloped park space for them to fill up into in a flood event until they can slowly release down to regular flow rate.
I have not read it, but it's contents were shared with me. I believe they found the dam at Lake Marble Falls would probably be destroyed. They made some major structural changes to attach it to bedrock. They also made some structural changes to Tom Miller dam. I googled Lake Travis flood studies , but did not see the study. There some interesting news stories about some past historical floods. I would be interested in reading the study. Thanks!
quote:quote:This will the the first time in 4 years that LCRA has had enough water to sell to rice farmers. At least on the lower portion of the river anyway, not sure about north of 10. I'm currently building a 40k acre foot reservoir for them south of Wharton to store water so that the rice farmers and local ranchers will have a more readily available supply of water in the lean years.
Doesn't LCRA send a crapload of water down the Colorado to rice farmers or something? That's an unverified rumor I've heard people gripe about for years. Wondering when and if that's happened yet and how that affects lake levels?
& AgySkeet06
I thought I read someplace that LCRA renegioated its irrigation contracts this past year. I thought it allowed more water to remain in Lake Travis despite senior water rights downstream.
quote:quote:obviously when you have a huge rain event is going to cause flooding but to say it is ignorant or disingenuous to believe that removing fiels of top soil and covering them with millions of sqft of surface pavement and roof area that both tie into concrete drainage systems designed to shed water from urban areas into whatever creek or watershed it can as quickly as possible does not have a dramatic affect on the severity of the flooding then I don't know what to say.quote:The bolded is hyperbole!quote:agree. As a witness first hand of the '98 and '02 flooding it will happen again. The rapid development in the hill country has stripped a lot of the top soil down to the limestone or better asphalt roads. The drainage systems all point to the rivers as a catch all. It is not sustainable.
It is great to see Travis at this level, but it's primary purpose is a flood control lake. It has gone up and down many times over the decades. The Pedernales and Llano watersheds are a ticking time bomb for a future catastrophic flood that Lake Travis wiil probably not be able to handle. The resulting damage from a rainfall event such as the 1998 Guadulupe River flood would be of a magnitude that is difficult to imagine.
Do you mean to imply that flash floods like what occurred on the Blanco last year resulted from "rapid development"? That is just an ignorant statement, if not disingenuous as well. Whenever those amounts of water fall in such a short time-frame over the Texas Hill country, flash flooding will occur. The most effective safeguard I can think of to counteract the "threat" is the construction of multiple flood control dams throughout the watershed, but that is a very expensive process not likely to happen.
You can't be serious. What, has development in the hill country increased impervious cover by .01 percent? What is the impervious cover of the llano watershed? .02 percent? What has a higher curve number(runoff potential), an over grazed rocky goat pasture or a subdivision with acre lots, 20 percent impervious cover, and grass cover?
Not to be mean, but it seams like I spend half my day dealing with uninformed people that propogate this type of horribly inaccurate information. There are tiny upticks near "major cities" in the watershed like llano mason and junction, but that has basically no affect on peak runoff from the major storm events. The hill country is not being paved.
quote:quote:unfortunately that reservoir south of wharton will only help farmers in the gulf coast irrigation division (bay city area) but i suspect much more of that water will go to industrial needs than agriculture as it comes online. it wont do anything for farmers in Garwood or Eagle Lake, but it is a start at more stable water in the southern basin.quote:This will the the first time in 4 years that LCRA has had enough water to sell to rice farmers. At least on the lower portion of the river anyway, not sure about north of 10. I'm currently building a 40k acre foot reservoir for them south of Wharton to store water so that the rice farmers and local ranchers will have a more readily available supply of water in the lean years.
Doesn't LCRA send a crapload of water down the Colorado to rice farmers or something? That's an unverified rumor I've heard people gripe about for years. Wondering when and if that's happened yet and how that affects lake levels?
There is another reservoir planned for the Eagle Lake area once this one is completed.
That's not to say a historic rainfall event would not crush the city of Austin. I was tracking a rainfall event that was heading right at downtown that geared east just south of town along the southern banks of onion creek that would have wrecked complete havic on the city. The storm event this past Memorial Day that flooded downtown and house park was your run of the mill 10 year storm. If a 100 year event, or much worse blanco river storm event, fell in Austin the horribly undersized storm sewer will cause severe localized flooding. And sever creek flooding. There are many homes in the floodplain in Austin.
quote:
Dont bring politics this board....
That happened with several threads before renegade's.
quote:
I have not read it, but it's contents were shared with me. I believe they found the dam at Lake Marble Falls would probably be destroyed. They made some major structural changes to attach it to bedrock. They also made some structural changes to Tom Miller dam. I googled Lake Travis flood studies , but did not see the study. There some interesting news stories about some past historical floods. I would be interested in reading the study. Thanks!
I am pretty sure those dams were built on bedrock from the get go. LCRA did a pretty major retrofit on the floodgates, which improved their ability to react more quickly to the "rain bomb" events like in Marble Falls in '07.
quote:quote:Yes, LCRA manages 4 irrigation divisions (Garwood, Lakeside, Pierce Ranch and Gulf Coast) in the lower colorado river basin. Rice historically has been the primary crop river water was used to irrigate but other commodities like cotton, corn, sorghum and turfgrass/sod farms receive water. There are many users downstream that have water rights to the highland lakes/colorado river water. The LCRA started delivering water to farmers a little over a week ago. From what i understand minimal water is coming from the lakes at this time as most water being pumped is what is referred to as above normal flow of the river. There are many farmers who have a chance of making a crop/profit this year due to the water supply and not relying on crop insurance to survive.
Doesn't LCRA send a crapload of water down the Colorado to rice farmers or something? That's an unverified rumor I've heard people gripe about for years. Wondering when and if that's happened yet and how that affects lake levels?
Well informed post. Thank you for sharing that with the board. One other note... A majority of rain each year falls over the Colorado east of the Highland Lakes and is lost to runoff in the Gulf. The LCRA has reservoir projects in the works that will capture this runoff in the future and lessen any impact on the lakes.
My family used to ranch on the Colorado River around Marble Fallas and my grandfather used to talk about how dangerous the Colorado river could get when the Llano got a ton of rain in its watershed in his younger years (he was born in the 20s).
He used to describe the river like a giant toilet that literally flushed out everything downstream (before they built Wirtz Dam and the other lakes).
He ranched/farmed also on the Lampassas River throughout his adult life and talked about the two 50's floods. His place was in the Lampassas River bottom and he got up in the middle of the night to pee and did so off the back porch which faced the river.
He was looking out over the field to the river and marveled at how the wheat was shimmering and moving in the moon light and then he realized it was cloudy and it was the river he was looking at like 20 yards from his house.
He loaded the kids up and headed to high ground...flood left dead cattle and sheep way up in the top of the old Pecan trees in the riverbottom...it never rained a drop and in fact had been sunny all day. All the rain came up near the head waters.
He used to describe the river like a giant toilet that literally flushed out everything downstream (before they built Wirtz Dam and the other lakes).
He ranched/farmed also on the Lampassas River throughout his adult life and talked about the two 50's floods. His place was in the Lampassas River bottom and he got up in the middle of the night to pee and did so off the back porch which faced the river.
He was looking out over the field to the river and marveled at how the wheat was shimmering and moving in the moon light and then he realized it was cloudy and it was the river he was looking at like 20 yards from his house.
He loaded the kids up and headed to high ground...flood left dead cattle and sheep way up in the top of the old Pecan trees in the riverbottom...it never rained a drop and in fact had been sunny all day. All the rain came up near the head waters.
quote:
I believe the answer to your questions is LCRA. The American Statesman had an in depth piece after the study was done based on the study. This 10-15 years ago. A catastrophic flooding event would obviously cause serious damage around Lake Travis, but downstream in Austin property loss and human loss would probably be greater. In 1952, the Pedernales watershed had a rainfall event that caused Lake Travis to rise 44' in 11 hours and 57' in 24 hours. An event like that when the lake is st 681, like it is now, is a problem. It is not if, but when.
Are you somewhat surprised that more water hasn't been released downstream yet? I know the city is gunshy about another drought and the population explosion in the Austin area. But we are coming up in our stormy season with El Nio conditions still in play. The type of event you describe could happen as soon as next weekend. (Not being too serious, but forecasts are already calling for 7+ in the Austin area this weekend into Monday. Absolutely enjoyed your posts. You seem very knowledgeable about the situation. I would love to learn more.
Could not tell you anything about that aspect. All i know is from the current project and that the last several years there has been no water available to sell, which is why this current reservoir and the future reservoir are on the books.
When there is 10-15-20 inches of rain, the volume of water is almost beyond human imagination.
When we lived in San Marcos we had a rainwater collection system so I became very familiar with how much water would go in the tank with x amount of rainfall.
If we received 1" of rain on our 4,000 sq ft roof we would collect 3,000 gallons of water.
For fun let's say on 40,000 sq ft of land (approx 1 acre) one inch of rainfall would result in 30,000 gallons of water.
20" of rain on that 40,000 sq ft of land (approx 1 acre) would result in about 600,000 gallons of water.
We lived on 25 acres so that 20" of rainfall would result in approximately 15,000,000 gallons of water.
When we lived in San Marcos we had a rainwater collection system so I became very familiar with how much water would go in the tank with x amount of rainfall.
If we received 1" of rain on our 4,000 sq ft roof we would collect 3,000 gallons of water.
For fun let's say on 40,000 sq ft of land (approx 1 acre) one inch of rainfall would result in 30,000 gallons of water.
20" of rain on that 40,000 sq ft of land (approx 1 acre) would result in about 600,000 gallons of water.
We lived on 25 acres so that 20" of rainfall would result in approximately 15,000,000 gallons of water.
LCRA lists the drainage area of Lake Travis as 38,130 square miles. If the whole drainage area caught a 10 inch rain, that'd be about 6.3 trillion gallons of runoff.
Using stupid math (my patent is pending!), a 10 inch rain over the whole drainage area for Lake Travis would be enough to cover all of the city limits of Austin in 117 feet of water.
Using stupid math (my patent is pending!), a 10 inch rain over the whole drainage area for Lake Travis would be enough to cover all of the city limits of Austin in 117 feet of water.
Being on LBJ, I can't be any happier! Nice to keep folks on Travis and finally off LBJ as it is busy enough.
quote:
The consensus 600 years ago was the earth was flat.
Fun fact. That's not true. Most people, certainly educated people, knew that the world was round, they just didn't know how big it was.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_flat_Earth
quote:
Using stupid math (my patent is pending!), a 10 inch rain over the whole drainage area for Lake Travis would be enough to cover all of the city limits of Austin in 117 feet of water.
I can think of worse ideas.....
quote:I believe this is what one would refer to as a run-on sentence.
obviously when you have a huge rain event is going to cause flooding but to say it is ignorant or disingenuous to believe that removing fiels of top soil and covering them with millions of sqft of surface pavement and roof area that both tie into concrete drainage systems designed to shed water from urban areas into whatever creek or watershed it can as quickly as possible does not have a dramatic affect on the severity of the flooding then I don't know what to say.
Even MORE fun (bad) math: a 10 inch rain over the whole Lake Travis drainage area would be enough water to cover the t.u. campus (431 acres) in 53,800 feet of water. That'd makes the hydrostatic water pressure at on the buildings 23,300 PSI - which is more than enough to crush all of the buildings.
quote:
I believe the answer to your questions is LCRA. The American Statesman had an in depth piece after the study was done based on the study. This 10-15 years ago. A catastrophic flooding event would obviously cause serious damage around Lake Travis, but downstream in Austin property loss and human loss would probably be greater. In 1952, the Pedernales watershed had a rainfall event that caused Lake Travis to rise 44' in 11 hours and 57' in 24 hours. An event like that when the lake is st 681, like it is now, is a problem. It is not if, but when.
One thing to keep in mind is that the rise in a lake from a given storm is inversely related to lake elevation. It looks like the 1952 storm you reference raised Lake Travis from a starting elevation of around 620 feet to 677 feet. That same storm would have raised a 681 foot Lake Travis substantially less. I'm not sure how much, I may have to calculate it later. My guess would be under 30 feet.
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