Finally, some good news on the drought front
All the rain this week is finally starting to show up in the reservoirs.
Over at the Little River reservoir, both inflow and gage height have finally climbed above the median for this time of year, and the most recently measured inflow (142 cubic feet per second) is the highest ever recorded for 12/30. (Granted, they've only been keeping stats at Little River for about 20 years). This should actually add a significant number of days to our water supply.
Over at the Flat River/Lake Michie, both inflow and gage height have just about reached median levels for this date. Looking at the satellite photo, we should be getting rain for at least another 3 hours.
My bet, even without the Teer Reservoir, is that the city will announce water supplies back up around the 45 day level (up from 36 last week) in Lake Michie and Little River tomorrow, which will be the first increase in quite some time. Teer is supposed to be online by now, but i haven't seen a press release announcing that yet. And i suspect that the city would absolutely want to spread that news as soon as it's official. Assuming some inflows into Teer as well, we could easily be at the 80 day mark for "easily accessible, premium" water after this rainfall.
Doesn't mean you can start taking baths yet, but that should be enough breathing room to allow our elected leadership to start thinking rationally about the relationship between development and water supply over the next couple of months.
By the Way - Flat River real-time data is here; Little River data here.
Adding, this gives a pretty good graphic presentation of how serious the problem is.
UPDATE: A little math. There's 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot of water. Multiplying out, it turns out you need an average flow of 31 cfs (232 gallons per second; 13912 gallons per minute) to meet a daily demand of 20 millions gallons per day. We haven't been close to that for the past couple of months.
The median at Lake Michie for this time of year over the past 80 or so years, has been 70 cfs, or more than double what's needed for current demand. We've been over 300 cfs for about the past 36 hours. That's almost 15 days of water right there, at least by my math. (For a couple of hours we got near 1000 cfs) The city's just updated their website saying we have 60 days without Teer, based on 17 million gallons per day average over the past week.
Again, we're certainly not out of the woods, since there's no rain in the immediate forecast. But we've got a little breathing room again.
UPDATE: As of 6 pm Monday, inflows at Lake Michie are still above 400 cfs, and over 100 cfs at Little River. That's just about 24 hours straight with a combined total over 500 cfs, and much of that time near 1000 cfs. Hopefully, that runoff will continue, because there's no rain in the forecast for the next 10 days or so.
Over at the Little River reservoir, both inflow and gage height have finally climbed above the median for this time of year, and the most recently measured inflow (142 cubic feet per second) is the highest ever recorded for 12/30. (Granted, they've only been keeping stats at Little River for about 20 years). This should actually add a significant number of days to our water supply.
Over at the Flat River/Lake Michie, both inflow and gage height have just about reached median levels for this date. Looking at the satellite photo, we should be getting rain for at least another 3 hours.
My bet, even without the Teer Reservoir, is that the city will announce water supplies back up around the 45 day level (up from 36 last week) in Lake Michie and Little River tomorrow, which will be the first increase in quite some time. Teer is supposed to be online by now, but i haven't seen a press release announcing that yet. And i suspect that the city would absolutely want to spread that news as soon as it's official. Assuming some inflows into Teer as well, we could easily be at the 80 day mark for "easily accessible, premium" water after this rainfall.
Doesn't mean you can start taking baths yet, but that should be enough breathing room to allow our elected leadership to start thinking rationally about the relationship between development and water supply over the next couple of months.
By the Way - Flat River real-time data is here; Little River data here.
Adding, this gives a pretty good graphic presentation of how serious the problem is.
UPDATE: A little math. There's 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot of water. Multiplying out, it turns out you need an average flow of 31 cfs (232 gallons per second; 13912 gallons per minute) to meet a daily demand of 20 millions gallons per day. We haven't been close to that for the past couple of months.
The median at Lake Michie for this time of year over the past 80 or so years, has been 70 cfs, or more than double what's needed for current demand. We've been over 300 cfs for about the past 36 hours. That's almost 15 days of water right there, at least by my math. (For a couple of hours we got near 1000 cfs) The city's just updated their website saying we have 60 days without Teer, based on 17 million gallons per day average over the past week.
Again, we're certainly not out of the woods, since there's no rain in the immediate forecast. But we've got a little breathing room again.
UPDATE: As of 6 pm Monday, inflows at Lake Michie are still above 400 cfs, and over 100 cfs at Little River. That's just about 24 hours straight with a combined total over 500 cfs, and much of that time near 1000 cfs. Hopefully, that runoff will continue, because there's no rain in the forecast for the next 10 days or so.
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
9 Comments:
The Teer Reservoir has been delayed until after 2008/1/1. Here is the story from WRAL.
By
Anonymous, at 8:58 PM
Thanks, Daniel. I missed that. So, another couple of days before Teer comes on line. Let's hope that actually happens.
By
Barry, at 9:48 PM
Here is another very good graphic from the N&O website
http://www.newsobserver.com/1181/story/745683.html
I suspect we'll be drawing more water from Jordan Lake soon---before the rain it was still 93% full. I am still disappointed by the lack of conservation by Durham residents (I have heard that residential use is down only 9% from last year). I am also disappointed that the Herald Sun has done so little to encourage conservation.
By
Anonymous, at 1:30 AM
Steve, the city hasn't updated it's stats in a few days, but daily usage over the holidays looks like it's down about 22% - 25% over December 06's monthly average. So there's some progress being made on that front.
The good news is that inflow at Lake Michie has been above 100 cfs for most of the past 12 hours, and above 500 cfs for the last 6 hours or so. 500 cfs is roughly 13 million gallons per hour. So there should be a few days to a week or more added to our supply as a result of the rains.
I wouldn't single out the HS for not having done more to promote conservation. that failure has been a public/private partnership.
By
Barry, at 9:11 AM
Barry, I hope that reflects some increased conservation, and not just students out of town (comparing one week against the whole month of December).
Nice to see flows into the reservoirs so high after yesterday's rain.
By
Anonymous, at 11:18 AM
To back up Barry's bath vs. shower comment, this from the National Geographic's website:
"Bath vs. Shower with low-flow head: If you keep your shower to seven minutes under a low-flow showerhead, you'll use about 14 gallons (53 liters) of water or less. Baths usually require about 20 gallons (80 liters), the same as a ten-minute shower."
Excerpt from a pretty cool summary of resource-saving measures from around the house (windows/dishwashers/bulbs, etc.):
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/everyday/greenhouse/tips.html
By
Marsosudiro, at 12:22 PM
I'm sure this has been said elsewhere, but if you take a shower by (1) wetting yourself down, along with the soap and washrag (or whatever), (2) turn off the water, (3) soap up and scrub whatever you like, and (4) turn the water back on long enough to rinse off, you'll probably save some more water. If you're keeping the water running to keep yourself warm, maybe you should turn up the heat, since it's water and not energy that's our most limited resource right now. Besides, the warm air will stay in the house longer than that water you paid to heat and then sent immediately down the drain.
By
Joseph H. Vilas, at 12:37 PM
There is a wonderful little water use calculator here:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/waterusagecalc.html
And it's not too late for the Herald to publish a supplement with
1. water-saving tips
2. a guide on reading your water meter and translating that into gallons of water
3. a guide to reading your water bill
4. a table of typical household uses/consumption,
5. a target---an estimate of the per capita water consumption levels that mere mortals can easily achieve with a few behavior mods.
I think the city has done a pretty good job managing this crisis and their website has lots of good information. Not nearly as effective, however, as having your hometown paper publish it in 4 colors.
By
Anonymous, at 1:07 PM
The city website now has the "premium" water supply at 120 days, including the 30 from the Teer Quarry.
The 2 inches of rain went a long way.
By
Anonymous, at 11:16 PM
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