February 2016 Update:


Below is the data for pumping, water releases and evaporation for February.


Evaporation for February = 3.11 inches or about 6,998 acre-feet.


Rainfall Recorded at the SRA for February = 2.87 inches.


Water Released Downstream for Communities by the SRA for February = 28.5 acre-feet or 9,286,765 gallons. That equals only about 0.013 inches taken off the lake.


Water Pumped by Dallas for February = 4,267.3 acre-feet or 1,390,505,679 gallons. That equals about 1.9 inches taken off the lake.


Water Released by the SRA through the Flood Gates when the lake was Overfull from Rain = 0.


So, the total water removed from the lake in February was about 5 inches, but some of that was replaced by the 2.87 inches of rainfall. I guess it is not surprising that the lake level stayed fairly constant in February.


2016 Totals through February:


Evaporation for 2016 = 5.62 inches or about 12,645 acre-feet.


Rainfall Recorded at the SRA for 2016 = 3.55 inches.



Water Released Downstream to Communities by the SRA for 2016 = 218.8 acre-feet or about 7,103,561 gallons. This totals about 0.097 inches for 2016.


Water Pumped by Dallas for 2016 = 9,921.9 acre-feet or 3,233,065,006 gallons. This equals about 4.41 inches removed from the lake. This represents about 7.6% of the 131,000 acre-feet that Dallas is entitled to pump from Lake Fork for the year.


Water Released Downstream by the SRA through the Flood Gates when the Lake was Overfull in 2016 = So far this year water was only released through the flood gates in early January and those totals were 38,898 acre-feet or 12,674,967,757 gallons. That was the equivalent of about 1.43 feet or 17.1 inches of water off the lake.


So, the total water removed from Lake Fork through February is about 61,688.7 acre-feet or about 2.28 feet or 27.4 inches. Well over half of that came from the releases through the gates in early January to prevent the lake from getting too high on the gates.