Lake Hefner at record low water levels, when will city buy Canton water?

[Snowman]

So "full pool" means that anything above that and they start releasing water, correct?

No, Hefner has a large capacity above the 'normal' water level for flood control. Though even outside of flood control, it seems like they tend to add some into that pool in the summer after rain, plausibly due to higher water demand and higher evaporation.

Plus Hefner is a bit odd as the only ways water goes out of it into OKC's water treatment plant and evaporation, when it reaches a level they decide on, they would just stop diverting water from Overholser/North Canadian River to it.

[Bill Robertson]

I haven't been by Hefner in a few days. The highest I've ever seen it was about 6 inches above the bottom of the concrete municipal boat slips. I need to see where it is in relation to that.

[Urbanized]

^^^^^^
Probably ~4' below that, but you'd better hurry! I just got caught in a gully-washer that felt like about 4 feet of rain.

[Pete]

Took this yesterday:

[Urbanized]

Above 1196’ elevation today. Less than 3’ away from being technically full, and it’s raining hard as I type this.

[jn1780]

With the upcoming El Nino, I suspect we will be saying talking about too much rain in the next year.

[bucktalk]

Wow....Hefner looks sooooo much better. Looks like it's 98% full. What a major improvement in a relatively short amount of time. Woot! Woot!

[Bill Robertson]

Level isn't bad at all for this time of year. I know I've talked about this before but we've had a few different sailboats in the center row of the public slips. We sold the last one maybe 4 years ago because it had sit on dry ground more often than not for a couple of years. One summer you could walk from the slip that has the golf course pumps to the main boat ramp on dry ground. That would be 20ish feet or more below where it is now.

[fortpatches]

Comparing this year to last year:

For all in Oklahoma:

What's going on with "Lugert-Altus"?

EDIT: Sorry about the low quality images. I don't know why they look like that.

[SEMIweather]

What's going on with "Lugert-Altus"?

Heavy farming usage would be my guess.

[Snowman]

...
What's going on with "Lugert-Altus"?

I had heard that it was mostly a mix of being drained for some renovations of the lake in 2021, and then limited rain in the catchment area after that completed. Granted over the last decade it seems when Texas/Oklahoma gets droughts, it's catchment area is much more effected than either of the Canadian rivers.

[SEMIweather]

I had heard that it was mostly a mix of being drained for some renovations of the lake in 2021, and then limited rain in the catchment area after that completed. Granted over the last decade it seems when Texas/Oklahoma gets droughts, it's catchment area is much more effected than either of the Canadian rivers.

I can only find an article about the Altus city reservoir being drained, not seeing anything about the lake.

https://www.kswo.com/2021/07/09/chan...eservoir-soon/

[fortpatches]

Isn't the lake what most people refer to the reservoir as? --- Nope, two different things. Altus Lake =/= Lake Altus-Lugert

Also, here is a better image of what I tried to insert. Not sure why it was such low quality.
Monthly Reservoir Storage.pdf (ok.gov)[PDF]

[soonerguru]

Comparing this year to last year:

For all in Oklahoma:

What's going on with "Lugert-Altus"?

EDIT: Sorry about the low quality images. I don't know why they look like that.

My guess is that the cotton farmers drained it. Even when there are non-drought years it struggles. The watershed is the the north fork of the Red River (or maybe Salt Ford, I can't remember), that comes into the state near Elk City.

They have had a ton of rain lately but there's only usually significant water in it during atypically rainy years. It's mostly used as a big feeder pond for the cotton farmers.

[gopokes88]

That lake more than any other in state is used heavily for farming

[Plutonic Panda]

Is that your guess or is that the actual case? Because I’d suspect some western lakes are used more for irrigation even though I don’t know much about the topic.

[Urbanized]

Hefner has picked up more than a foot of elevation in the past three days; more than in any similar time frame in recent memory. It’s now about a foot from full pool, and will still be getting lots of runoff over the next few days. Suddenly seems possible if not likely that we will see full pool before the dog days of summer.

[Midtowner]

Maybe we can ditch the even/odd water rationing at least for this year?

[gjl]

Maybe we can ditch the even/odd water rationing at least for this year?

Who need to water? Other than my tomato plants, I haven't watered a single blade of grass this year and I am having to mow every 4-5 days.

[scottk]

Who need to water? Other than my tomato plants, I haven't watered a single blade of grass this year and I am having to mow every 4-5 days.

Shhhhh.....don't tell that to the people who still run their sprinkler systems every morning, despite having 6+ inches of rain in the first 9 days of July.

Not the same everywhere though, water restrictions this summer and for the foreseeable future north of Tulsa: https://www.fox23.com/news/bartlesvi...b0f6bb0ce.html

[gjl]

Shhhhh.....don't tell that to the people who still run their sprinkler systems every morning, despite having 6+ inches of rain in the first 9 days of July.

Not the same everywhere though, water restrictions this summer and for the foreseeable future north of Tulsa: https://www.fox23.com/news/bartlesvi...b0f6bb0ce.html

Or you see the sprinklers running WHILE it's raining. Yes I know they are probably on timers, but this year the timers should be off.

[Midtowner]

Shhhhh.....don't tell that to the people who still run their sprinkler systems every morning, despite having 6+ inches of rain in the first 9 days of July.

Not the same everywhere though, water restrictions this summer and for the foreseeable future north of Tulsa: https://www.fox23.com/news/bartlesvi...b0f6bb0ce.html

Well if it doesn't rain in the next couple of weeks, for example, we're still not going to have a lack of capacity in our reservoirs and in fact, we may be releasing lots of water downstream anyway. I personally have a Rachio controller hooked up to a Tempest weather system, so my system won't rain when the ground is saturated, when it's too windy, when it's too cold or when it's raining.

Thanks for your concern though.

And north of Tulsa and elsewhere have different water issues than the OKC metro. We have abundant water plans going 50 years+ into the future.

[jn1780]

Odd/Even watering days is largely a pointless water saving measure. If someone expected to use x gallons of water on their lawn in a week, they will just use more water on the days they can water. The city has no issue providing water during the summer. If a large water line broke that would be a different story.

[scottk]

Odd/Even watering days is largely a pointless water saving measure. If someone expected to use x gallons of water on their lawn in a week, they will just use more water on the days they can water. The city has no issue providing water during the summer. If a large water line broke that would be a different story.

Speaking of which, just north of Quail Springs Mall on May, I drove by this weekend, near NW150th, quite a mess in the parking lot next to OnCue, where Tucker's and Jimmy John's are, certainly looked like a line break, with city trucks, a giant mound of mud, a deep hole, and water everywhere.

[SEMIweather]

I will never understand why one group of people on this forum act like OKC is located in a tropical climate with an endless supply of fresh water every time we are in the midst of an unusually rainy period such as the one we are right now, while another (largely different) group of people act like OKC will have the same imminent water issues as the Southwest U.S. every time we are in an unusually dry period such as the one we were in for much of the past year. The reality is that over a multiyear timescale, OKC's climate is almost equally influenced by the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, and the deserts of the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico, meaning that we will almost always be cycling into or out of drought conditions. It is a constant push and pull that has been happening since the city was founded 130+ years ago (and long before that, of course). Possibly we will have higher average annual rainfall totals as time goes on due to climate change causing more days with high precipitable water values, but by the same token, we may well also have longer periods of severe drought due to climate change causing the jet stream to weaken and weather patterns to stagnate. The city is set up well in terms of future water supply (especially given that we have water rights in Southeast Oklahoma which does tend to get more consistent rains), but our precipitation patterns are still erratic enough that it would be shortsighted to abandon all water conservation efforts every time our reservoirs hit capacity.