Recent rainfall has been good to Lake Brownwood, offering a rise in elevation of more than 3 feet over the past two weeks, according to Brown County Water Improvement District General Manager Dennis Spinks.
Storm systems in the area during the last week of April brought the lake up about a foot and this past week’s rain garnered another 2 feet said Spinks. He explained that this made the lake capacity rise more than 10%, from about 47% full to now 57.84% capacity at Lake Brownwood.
“That three feet of water is what we’d normally use in Brown County in a year’s time plus evaporation,” said Spinks. “We’ve essentially gained a year (of water supply) in the last two weeks.”
Spinks stated that Lake Brownwood now sits at 10 feet below spillway, at an elevation of 1415 ft. msl.
Although this is a significant amount of water that has been added to Lake Brownwood, Spinks and many others in Brown County are hopeful that the rain will continue as forecasted for the week.
“The forecast has a chance of rain every day this week with the exception of today,” Spinks said Monday afternoon. “Anything we get should be runoff. We haven’t had a massive amount of rain, just a couple of inches, ½ inch to 1 ½ inch on the watershed (during each storm system in the past two weeks), but it’s kept everything running, coming into the Bayou, mostly coming from May and Rising Star.”He stated that the streams are all still running and that the runoff has almost peaked.
Despite the positive news of the lake elevation rising, Spinks stated that the Brown County Water District is continuing with its search for an alternative source of water for the area. Research on the possibility of establishing a well field in Brown County is still underway. A lot of data has been collected and is being analyzed with no reported results at this time.
Spinks stated, “We’re going to get some rain, it’s not like we are not going to get rain. The lake level goes up and down over the years.” He explained that for the past 75-80 years, Lake Brownwood has stayed at an average of 90% capacity with the exception of the past 5 years, when it dropped to an average of 50% capacity. “This makes us concerned that we could get lower,” he stated. “Lake Brownwood has never reached a point it couldn’t supply Brown County, but that chance still exists so we need to explore all possibilities of alternative sources.”
Spinks stated that a rain over Lake Brownwood’s watershed, such as the one last week in Snyder which dropping 11 inches of rain over a 12 hour period, would be what it would take to fill up Lake Brownwood. He explained that there is a possibility this could happen as the area is under a mild El Nino weather pattern currently. Over the past 3-4 years, the Brown County area has not seen a period of continual rain chances that we have seen this month.
“It’s been a wet spring, but not a lot of runoff,” stated Spinks. “Anything we get (this week) will add to the elevation of the lake.”
