November 2015 Lake Levels and Discharge

No power generation to speak of in the first half of November meant lake levels stayed virtually constant.  Rain and cold moved in and the lake reached full pool, nearly two and a half feet above the 5 year average.  Power generation is clearly seen in the latter part of the month as average generating discharge dropped the lake towards more average levels.

October 2015 Lake Levels and Discharge

October turned out to be the best boating month of the year! Ameren power generation was almost negligible with only five outflows of any consequence, leaving the Lake of the Ozarks comfortably above the 659 mark despite the lack of rain.  Calm winds and warm weather throughout the month made it a boaters dream. Wow!

PSA - Getting Serious About a "No-Wake Lake"

December 2015 update

Three members of the Missouri House of Representatives that often advocate for the lake area have been making stirrings lately about conditions on The Lake of the Ozarks regarding large wakes.  On November 4th, a public forum will be held at the Osage Beach City Hall at 9am to hear concerns regarding lake conditions along with dock and fire safety issues.

The Lake's rather undeserving reputation for being hazardous has been getting more attention over the past year. Despite efforts from Ameren to hold boat size down through dock regulation, this year's flooding along with the subsequent "no-wake" start to the 4th of July holiday weekend brought home the problem of large wakes and public pressure to do something about it.

A proposal being floated at this time by Rep. Wood is to restrict any area of the lake with less than 1250 feet from shoreline to shoreline as a no-wake zone, possibly only for larger boats.  This restriction would have a profound impact, given that nearly every cove on the lake would fall into this category. I urge anyone with an interest to either attend the meeting or write their representative as to their opinion, along with any ideas they may have to help improve situation.

Information on how to contact the three attending members of the State House of Representatives can be found at each link.

Rocky Miller (district includes Osage Beach and Lake Ozark area)

Diane Franklin (district includes Camdenton area)

David Wood  (district includes Gravois arm)

This will likely be worked out by those of us who own property on the lake, and could easily affect home values. Get involved if you can.

Shootout - Saturday Aug 29th 2015

Better get there early if you want a front row spot!

This was at 10am.

Two hours later...

Shootout Parade of Boats - 2015

This Cigarette offshore was huge and five 400 HP outboards is just ridiculous. Ridiculously awesome that is! Cigarette ruled the strip last night with many models at the Shootout parade of boats. Looking forward to seeing fast boats going fast this weekend.

Summer Sunsets

July 2015 Lake Level Summary - The Flood

Here it is, a summary of lake level and discharge for the month of July that made history.  As we can clearly see, the surge in level over 660' on the 4th of July weekend was quickly brought back down to normal, remained stable, and very close to the 5 year average.  Discharge remained high well after the flooding to pass water from Truman lake.  The last week of July shows a fairly normal pattern of discharge flow and lake levels.  I'd like to see the lake up above 659' this time of year as rain becomes a little scarcer and Labor Day approaches.

2019 Update: Thought I'd add some of my new graph kung-fu to this old post. It was an extraordinary month after all.  Here's the daily candlestick graph for that same month.