2018 Shootout Meet and Greet Parade of Boats

Best. Ever.

A couple of things changed this year with the Shootout parade of boats on the Dam for 2018. Firstly, the boats were lined up on the sides of the strip allowing the crowds a center aisle to move about. This really made things much easier for everyone to get around and see all of the boats. I'm sure some of the bar owners felt it obstructed line of site of their establishment but from what I could tell it had little impact on the amount of business they were getting. Casablanca, High Noon, Lucky's and all the others were very busy last night.

The center lane was used for pedestrian traffic with boats on each side.

Which brings me to the second welcome change for the parade, open containers. No glass of course, but for the first time since I've been going to the event, you could walk around with a beer in a cup. I know that sounds like an unimportant thing but relaxing open container laws for an event such as this has a rather dramatic effect in general. First of all, people get out and see the boats, not being confined to have their drink in an establishment. Secondly, being able to take your drink away, leaves room for others to come purchase one for themselves, providing for a nice steady flow for business. Win, win. The police were out in full force, polite and professional, but certainly there to make sure things didn't get out of hand. I drove through the strip on the way to work this morning and saw a surprisingly small amount of litter, so everyone did their part to keep things clean. Thanks to the City of Lake Ozark for the welcome changes that made for a great night for all.

More pics!

Things started off a bit slow

On the deck of the recently opened High Noon

Now we got a crowd!

A lot of boat for two people!

People from one end to the other on the strip

Console boats are getting more popular

This boat was the Belle of the ball if you ask me

Power to spare

awesome lighting

Winding down for the night.

Lake TV has a nice two and half minute long video with some cool drone footage mixed in.

New Lake Level Graphing

Data visualization is a hot topic in my industry, and one I personally enjoy despite not being very good at it.  One of the things I've been wanting to do for sometime is to add what are called "candlestick" graphs to the monthly lake level reports. I've done this type of charting before, in February 2014, when Ameren basically sent a small tsunami down the Osage river from a rapid discharge from the lake. I liked the chart, but it was bit labor intensive. I think I've figured out an easy way to produce it on a monthly basis now. For those familiar with stock market analysis, candlestick charts are the preferred graph for looking at stock prices over time. They tend to weed out the "noise" of daily trade prices and focus on the more important trends.

Using candlestick charts on lake levels will allow us to focus more on starting and ending levels and diminish the relevancy of the day to day highs and lows, while visually emphasizing large swings. For those who are not familiar with candlestick charts, or how to read them, they are quite simple but I've written a guide here, as it relates to tracking lake levels.

So here's the first, going back to July's data. (I even dolled it up with a nice background!)

As you can see, there's only 31 data points now, one for each day, rather than 746, one for each hour of the month, while basically providing the same information detail.

I'll try to add other elements to the graph such as the 5 year moving average and flow rate as time allows, but for now, I think this will be a great addition to the monthly lake level post. Hope you like it!

July 2018 Lake Levels and Flow Rates

Another unremarkable month on the Lake of the Ozarks for levels and flow, just the way we like it. With little rain to start and mild temperatures at the end of the month Ameren barely covered their operating costs generating very little power (indicated by flow over 10,000cfs in green).

The lake level finishes the month up about 3 inches above the five year moving average at 659.46'.

As usual for this time of year, the scale is exaggerated due to the relatively limited range of the data. Lake levels deviated only about 1 foot for the entire month.