Lake Michigan's water level is still 11 inches higher this August than what it was a year ago and the high water levels, with storms, have caused erosion along its shoreline. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is predicting the lake's level will drop by an inch by this time next month.
Lake Mead Nevada is down 100+ feet as we speak and still dropping. Lowest it has been since it was filled in early 1940's. Lake is surrounded in places by sheer cliffs and with the alkaline water the Cliff sides are whiteish with what we locals refer to as a bath tub ring. While the country east of the Rockies has gotten mucho rain the west side is rainless for the most part and even rainy Washington state is dry. We need a couple of hundred year snows on the west side of the Rockies and even that will only make a dent. Fair Winds and Full Sails...Old Salt
That's a tough situation for lake Meade. I bid some equipment a few years back for the new intake tunnel that's much deeper than the existing one(s). That was for potable water for (I guess) Las Vegas area. The existing is in danger of being uncovered. It would seem the original designers didn't expect the water to get this low or even lower, and it would also seem the present bunch that runs that facility aren't expecting g it to get any better in the near future or they wouldn't be spending all that coin on lower intakes.
Lake Ontario, on the other hand, drops over the summer as a matter of normal routine, but I believe it's still higher than normal.
Catigale wrote:The coolest thing that happens in the Greats is in the fall, when they " turn over"
Has to do with the peculiar function of density vs temperature of water...it has a local maximum at 4 degrees C
Short version. As the lakes cool in the fall, at some point the water down below becomes less dense than the water up top, and then the lake literally trades the top water for the bottom water
Most liquids get more dense as they cool, until the phase transition, but liquid water goes through a couple of roller coaster curves on that path - it gets more dense down to about 4C, then starts to get less dense from 4C to 0C.
While the country east of the Rockies has gotten mucho rain the west side is rainless for the most part and even rainy Washington state is dry. We need a couple of hundred year snows on the west side of the Rockies and even that will only make a dent. Fair Winds and Full Sails...Old Salt
