Drier-Than-Normal Winter Could Mean Slow Comeback for Lake Hartwell Levels
Despite high rainfall in October, Lake Hartwell struggles to come back from 2016 drought.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Savannah District says the Savannah River Basin, including Lake Hartwell, is still technically in a drought, but some much-needed rainfall last month did help.
Corps spokesman Jeremy Buddemeier said Tuesday Hartwell recorded over 7 inches of rainfall in October the most on record for the month since 1948.
However, he says Hartwell is still six feet below the winter guide curve and runoff for the year continues to be below average.
As of Tuesday, Hartwell lake stood at 652 ft above mean sea level and he says that means the lake has not yet come back fully from the 2016 drought.
“We’re still six feet down from where we should be,” he said. “We’re sort of coming out of the drought that has been plaguing us for the last year. The way we characterize it we’re still technically in a drought because of the amount of run-off that we’re not getting still.”
Buddemeier said in his Balancing the Basin blog, however, that rainfall has improved in 2017.
Thus far, he said we’ve had six months with above average rain at each of the sub-basins, but the cumulative amount is still only about 4-5 inches more than average – not enough to consider the drought over.
To overcome the extreme level the 2016 rain deficit created, we’ll need many more October-like months.
The Corps depends on the winter rains that typically come between November and March to fill the lake back up to full pool in time for the start of the summer season.
But Buddemeier says the outlook for how much winter rainfall we will get this year is questionable, according to the National Weather Service.
So what they’re saying is this big swath of the Southeast, which includes the Savannah River Basin is we have a higher-than-normal chance to have a warmer and a drier winter,” he said.
Buddemeier said that’s not to say Lake Hartwell won’t eventually recover from last year’s drought.
However, he said only time will tell if the National Weather Service prediction is accurate.