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It was certainly no end to the drought,
but Wake County gardeners and water
users thankfully watched Saturday’s
thunderstorms that brought between an
inch and an inch-and-a-half of rain,
depending on your location.
The heavy afternoon
downpours followed by a steady drizzle
through the evening helped to lift the
Falls Lake level by more than
four-tenths of a foot, from 250.46 feet
above mean sea level on Thursday at 3
p.m. to 250.89 feet on Sunday at the
same time. Normal pool is 251.5 feet,
although in the spring the lake is
usually higher.
The rain will also ruin the
lake’s tributaries of the chance for a
dubious honor, record low flows for
April. Until Saturday, the combined
flows from the Eno, Flat and Little
rivers were hitting record lows – 78
cubic feet per second between April 1
and 16 while the normal April inflow is
879 cfs.
On Thursday, the flows
recorded at the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers web site for Falls Lake were 8
cfs for the Little River, 13 cfs for the
Eno and 20 for the Flat River.
Sunday afternoon, those
swelled to 203 cfs for the Little, 560
cfs for the Eno and 989 for the Flat
with the lake at 250.73 feet and rising.
The flows had dwindled
substantially by Monday, but were still
above last week’s. To get an
hour-by-hour reading of the inflow, lake
level and discharge at the dam, go to
http://epec.saw.usace.army.mil/dssfalls.txt.
On Monday, April 4, Terry M.
Brown, the water control manager for the
Wilmington district of the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers, which operates Falls
Lake and Dam, said the water supply
storage pool in the lake had risen from
78 percent last week to 81 percent this.
Raleigh is continuing to
stress water conservation and enforcing
its stage 2 water conservation
restrictions. The city also has had
conservative water use. Public Utilities
Director Dale Crisp said Tuesday the
average water use for the past 30 days
was 46 million gallons a day. The
all-time high use for one day was set
during the drought of 2002 at 72.1 mgd,
and the high use during last summer’s
drought was 67 mgd in September.
The National Weather Service
predicts the severe drought in the
middle of North Carolina will continue
through the next three months but with
some easing because of rainfall.
Predicted rainfall for the area through
July is shown as “EC,” meaning equal
chances for below-normal, at-normal, and
high-than-normal rainfall, or the usual
roll of the dice. |
