August 2021

I have archived the August 2021 Water Level Chart (at left). The 3.08 inches of rain we received in August fell slightly short of the 3.33 inch average for the month, so we’re a little further behind (-1.58 inches) for the year than we were at the end of July. We’ve received 26.17 inches of rain to date, the average for the end of August is 27.75 inches. We also anticipated a good soaking as the remnants of Hurricane Fred and Hurricane Henri passed by within a few days of each other and on August 19th and we opened the dam’s gate a foot to release some water and create some headspace for what potentially could have been a lot of storm water runoff. The storms were a disappointment however, dropping only a combined total of 0.84 inches of rain with virtually no additional runoff and we ended up closing the gate 5 days after opening it, having lowered the lake a grand total of only 3.4 inches. Now it looks like Hurricane Ida which will be passing to our south later this week may result in significant rainfall. Time will tell.

We had another reason for starting to lower the lake level in mid-August: we’re planning to install a dry fire hydrant at the Clary Lake dam in mid-September and to make that work easier, the lake level should be at least a foot below the top of the dam, perhaps even a little lower. We have the discretion in the fall to lower the lake as much as 2 feet below the HWM, but we don’t plan on taking it down that much. As of the end of August the lake level was 0.95 feet below the High Water Mark, and 0.67 feet below the top of the dam. For what it’s worth, the lake level this summer has been generally higher than it was last year thanks to the heavy rainfall we received in July, and at the start of September it is currently equal to what it was on this date last year.