Tuttle Creek Lake levels are lower than this time last year; a time when flooding was just around the corner.
Operations Project Manager at Tuttle Creek Reservoir Brian McNulty says around this time last year the lake was 35 ft higher than it is now. As of Friday morning, the lake was only 5 ft over than normal level. Currently, the lake is only 3.5% capacity, compared to over 50% last March.
“March of last year, it was wet here as well as all the way up the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Montana,” says McNulty.
Other surrounding lakes are also doing well with Perry lake at 10% compared to 34% last year and Milford lake at 2% compared to 30%.
The lake in the Kansas basin that is in the worst shape is Clinton Lake, at only 12.5% capcity. Missouri rivers were half full last year, and have been slowly rising in the past month to 16% capacity.
“They have been releasing water over the past month at Gavin Point Dam, at the South Dakota/Nebraska border, at 35,000 cubic ft per sec. They were releasing 55,000 this time last year,” says McNulty.
McNulty says there has been a slight drop in the cumulative flood control storage in the six big lakes. However, they still have 2.5 million acre feet of water, which they will continue to release over the next few weeks.
A dryer spring has also helped with keeping lake levels in the area down as well. McNulty says most of the storms the state has been experiencing have been mostly south of the area.
However, while the Kansas basin is dry, the basin up north is saturated. That basin gets its water from three different sources including two snowpacks. Last spring, the early March rains melted those snowpacks and were a cause for flooding.
“This spring has been better, that plain snowpack has been mostly melted, but it did melt at a slower rate. We haven’t had near the precipitation that we had in the late winter/early spring,” says McNulty. “That hasn’t been as big of an issue but we still have that in front of us.”
McNulty also adds the mountain snowpacks have still been accumulating snow, but at a normal rate. Sometime next week will be the snowpack peak, causing the water to go down the Missouri basin. However, most of that water will distribute through the lakes.
While the Kansas basin and the local area have been dry from rain, consistent showers up norht could cause concern down the line. McNulty says possible heavy rainfalls at those levies damaged during last year’s flooding could affect this area.
“There are still dozens of levies that are damaged or still breached. The river has to be down to begin any kind of repair on those levies,” says McNulty.
McNulty says last year they asked for deviations to increase flow levels in the Missouri River to get rid of water in the lakes in the Kansas river basin. This will be much more difficult this year with the damage to the levies and the inability to repair them.
