Lake Levels

Levels have been on the rise all year. But our recent bout with heavy rain and flash flooding has left quite an impression with our lakes, Nicole Sanchez has more.

This weekend's drop after drop of precipitation accumulated into many inches of rain.

"As of today August, June thru today August, we've received 13.9" of rain, and so the record was 13.08," here in San Angelo," Jason Johnson a hydrologist with the National Weather Service says.

Johnson also adds that this 24 hour event of rain from Friday night thru Saturday left a beneficial amount of runoff throughout the Concho Valley.

"For this area when you get rainfall rates of over 1" an hour, then we accumulated 6" thru that area, then it doesn't have time to soak in, and so a lot of it will run off and that's the way our reservoirs will be able to catch that," Johnson says.

And the reservoirs defiantly did catch Tropical Storm Erin's accumulation. Johnson says that the highest increase of water levels in lakes could be seen north of San Angelo at Lake Sweetwater with 29.7' and at Oak Creek Reservoir with 15.3'.

Although some area lakes here in San Angelo didn't quite reach over 15' many did raise in their lake volume.

"Twin Buttes and OC Fisher have caught, enough rain to bring the pools up about 5', about 5' in the North pool of Twin Buttes and then 5' in the pool of OC Fisher," Johnson says.

Though the rainfall lasted for only a short time, Johnson says that it's been awhile since he has seen an impact like this.

"Something to fall in just a 24 hour period to bring these local lakes up, it's been a while. I can’t' think of the last time that we've seen them come up so quick," Johnson adds.

This weekend's Tropical Storm Erin raising levels here 5', Twin Buttes has another 20' until it reaches capacity, and more storms could be on the way.

"If we we're to get some rain associated with the hurricane that's moving into the Gulf now, we could see even additional rises to the reservoirs," Johnson says.