2016 Primary Election Results for Camden County

This data is from the Missouri Secretary of State's office.  You can go see the results for any county in Missouri here.

For Camden County though, here are the results for the six (five now) remaining candidates. Total votes cast in Camden County were 12,815, and the results are in order of most votes.  While Missouri is an open primary state voters can only vote once, and for only one party of choice.

Democrats: Out of 2841 total ballots
Bernie Sanders: 1419, or 49.947%
Hillary Clinton: 1388, or 48.856%

Bernie wins by the slimmest of margins, 31 votes.

For the Republicans it was very close between Senator Cruz and Donald Trump overall in the state, but not in Camden county where Trump won by nearly twenty five points!

Republicans: Out of 9961 total ballots
Donald Trump: 5467, or 54.844%
Ted Cruz:          2985, or 29.967%
John Kasich:     846, or 8.493%
Marco Rubio:   473, or 4.749% (campaign now suspended)

As we can see from the numbers, over 3 times the number of our Republican neighbors voted compared to Democrats. I'm of the opinion that most Democrats stayed home as either candidate works for them really.

With a 2014 U.S. Census estimated population of 44,021, and 77% of that number of voting age, means there should be about 34,000 eligible voters.  A turnout of 12,815 represents a participation rate of 29.1%.

Putting it another way, every person that voted just made the choice for two others as well. While primaries are only the political party nominee process, in our two-party system it is easily the vote that has the most impact.  Once the process comes down to just two candidates for the general election, things are reduced to a simple popularity contest.

Vote. Democracy is a participation sport.

Drawdown Stabilizes As the Rain Stays Away

The drawdown of lake levels seems to have stopped and flow remains minimal so we can see the trend is on the rise a bit.  It appears yesterday's low is it for the year.  At two and a half feet below the average level for this time of year, this is a good opportunity to gain access to shoreline not typically exposed. I hope they maintain this level through the weekend.  After last year's flooding, there is a lot of debris to pull out of the water.

2016 Drawdown Deepens

The lake at 8am is now at 652.97', and it's lowest point of the year so far. Generation has been stopped and flow seems to be from the house generators at around 3000cfs.  At this flow rate, the lake will begin to rise slowly.  We are now two and half feet below the five year average.  Anecdotally, this is the lowest I remember seeing it in quite a long time.

Time to recover those chairs that blew off the dock.

Bagnell Preps the Lake Ahead of the Storm.

Today, one year ago, the lake reached its lowest point of 2015. I thought we had reached the lowest point in this year's annual drawdown last week, but it appears that Ameren has been releasing a respectable amount of water in anticipation of the coming 4 inches of rain.  The effect has been to see lake levels lower than they have been in five years when the lake reached a minimum of 653.69' on March 31, 2011.  The lake is currently at 653.35' and dropping.

With a sustained discharge averaging over 25,000 cfs for the past 24 hours the lake has dropped a full foot. This is actually great insight to just how much water must flow out to obtain such drops when there is very little surface water contributing to lake levels.  It's been very dry in the area so nearly all of the lake's water renewal lately has come from its major river and stream sources, which on average run about 10,000 cfs.

I don't like rapid tide-like changes in lake depth, it seems to mess with the fishing. I respect what Ameren is trying to prepare for, but I think they may be overreacting a bit. I don't think four inches of rain is going flood a lake that was already nearly six feet below normal operating levels.

Then again, they may just be trying to make the paddle-fishing interesting below the dam. ;-)

Update

Pop Quiz: Which lake is bigger, Truman Lake or the Lake of the Ozarks?

Actually Truman Lake is bigger than the Lake of the Ozarks.  Look at any map and it's easy to see that the two lakes appear to be about the same size. It turns out that land-wise there is only a slight size difference in the surface area each lake takes up, but Truman Lake is slightly bigger.  It is the amount of impounded water that is remarkably different.

                                                  Truman Lake                               Lake of the Ozarks

Surface Area:                      55,600 acres (87 sq.mi.)                 55,000 acres (86 sq.mi.)
Max water storage              about 1.3 Trillion gallons               about 617 billion gallons
source Ameren UE ML083360080

As we can see, despite covering roughly the same square mileage on the surface, Truman Dam holds more than twice the amount of water!  This indicates that, in general, Truman Lake is twice as deep as Lake of the Ozarks.

Note: The 617 billion gallon storage rating for the Lake of the Ozarks is below the "officially" stated storage of 650 billion gallons.

January 2016 Lake Level and Discharge

The effects of December's flooding are only now truly receding.  Ameren has kept Bagnell Dam discharge at full generating capacity (above 37,500cfs) for almost the entire month in order to help take pressure off of Truman Lake which maintained minimal flow in December to help with flooding.

In fact, flood gates apparently were opened again from January 5th to January 16th.  Discharge remains nearly at full generating capacity starting February.  The 5 year moving average (in orange) shows typical lake level for this time of year and as can be seen, is nearly two feet higher. Ameren continues to try to reach drawdown levels as expected, but they will need to maintain +30,000cfs outflow to make it to the average low level by mid-Februrary.

2015 Update - Multi-Year Levels and Discharge Analysis

2015 was a record year for the lake of the Ozarks.  Two major flooding events and a no-wake executive order from the Governor were just some of the highlights.  Here is the full analysis of operations at the lake of the Ozarks, now with 2015 data included.