The past couple of months have seen increased rainfall in the Austin area. We asked LCRA’s chief meteorologist Bob Rose to tell us what this means for the Colorado River and drought in our region. His answer may surprise you – read on to learn more!
It’s been an unusually wet fall in Central Texas, with nearly 20 inches of rain falling in Austin in September and October. It turned out to be the wettest October in Austin history and the eighth wettest month ever recorded in Austin. Creeks are running, the landscape is green and stock ponds are brimming full. There’s only one problem: The levels of lakes Travis and Buchanan are still near record low levels, with only modest gains since early September.
The relatively small rise in lake levels — even with above normal rainfall this fall — reflects the intensity of the region’s prolonged drought that dates back more than three years. During this time, rain falling across the Hill Country, the watershed to the Highland Lakes, has been very spotty. Long stretches occurred between rain events, causing Hill Country soils to become unusually dry. When the rain has fallen, as it did this fall, the rain recharges the soil, but little makes it to the lakes because the soil is so dry. We’ve seen this situation play out over and over again, resulting in record-low lake inflows for the past three years.
Keep in mind that where rain falls makes a huge difference to our lakes. Although there were two separate 12-inch rain events across the Austin and Travis County area during October, little of the runoff helped Lake Travis. That’s because rain falling in Austin and Travis County largely falls downstream of the Highland Lakes and drains to the Colorado River below Austin, not to the Highland Lakes.
And as we saw in the decade-long drought of the 1950s, wet periods can develop within prolonged droughts. A flood in the fall of 1952 developed on the heels of a five-year drought, but the drought resumed in 1953 and continued for another four years. The oceanic parameters that helped create our current drought are still in place, so it’s not clear whether our wet fall was a similar temporary break in the drought pattern or a possible trend in the other direction.
So make no mistake, a very serious drought continues for the Highland Lakes. To turn this situation around, we’ll need to see a persistent series of heavy rainstorms across the Hill Country above the Highland Lakes. Let’s hope the current wet pattern continues.
Keep up with the latest information on the drought at lcra.org.