You might have noticed recently through all the rain we’ve endured that it seems the water level of the lake is a little bit higher than has been in recent years. In checking back in with our ALSC President, Lonnie Goulett, he informs me that the lake is actually eight and a half inches above the Ordinary High Water Mark (If you’re not familiar with OHWM, refer to our earlier blog post for more detail on that). Eight and a half inches does sound impressive, no? If I were to step into an 8.5” deep puddle that would pretty much extend clear to the top of an ordinary dress sock… surely enough water to get your shoes wet if not soak the bottom of your trousers too! But how much water is that exactly for a lake the size of Angle Lake?
Well, first off let’s forget ‘exactly’ and agree to settle on ‘close enough’. Using the excellent search engine at Google, I discovered Associate Professor Dr. Mark Leipnik's Web page Hydrology Lab #1 Units which describes an acre foot measurement of water is equal to 325,851 gallons… If Angle Lake is measured at 100 surface acres and we are currently measuring 8.5” above OHWM, a quick exercise in mathematics reveals that we are currently twenty-three million, eighty-one thousand, one hundred twelve and one half gallons of water over the Ordinary High Water Mark! That’s a lot of water!
How we arrived at this estimate: 1 acre foot divided by 12 = 27,154.25 gallons per inch X 8.5 Inches = 230,811.125 X 100 Acres = 23,081,112.5 gallons of water! Please note, to our knowledge, no actual brain cells were harmed in generating this calculation.
2 comments:
Lonnie now reports that as of noon on March 15th, we were registering 10" above the OHWM.
That means we are at 23,121,844 gallons above OHWM and counting!
The level of the lake was up to 11" above the OHWM as of March 19th. Will let you do the math Mr. Blogmeister.
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