Information and editorial regarding the Lake of the Ozarks and Missouri's Ozarks region.
Thursday, June 01, 2017
May 2017 Lake Level and Flow Rate - Almost A Trillion Gallons!
Here's the lake level and flow chart for May 2017. As you can see lake levels are right at the five year average and quite normal for this time of year. I'm confidant that full pool will be reached sometime in June and stay there for the rest of the summer. What is interesting is the discharge rate which has remained very high since the end of April. I'd have to check the data, but pretty sure this flow rate hasn't been maintained for this long since I've been keeping track of things for over seven years. 50,000cfs (cubic feet per *second*) for this long represents and incredible amount of water. How incredible? The data shows about 960 BILLION gallons of water passed through Bagnell Dam just in the month of May. Considering the Lake of the Ozarks holds about 628 billion gallons at full pool, it was enough water to fill the lake over again plus a third. By contrast, when the Lake was first allowed to fill it took just over a year to reach spillway level after the dam's completion. The interesting part is that, as the chart above shows, this rate of flow continues into June.