Lake Lanier Water Levels

[wolfeman131]

I know there is a much more serious drought in Texas, but things aren't great in the Atlanta area either. Two of the more popular lakes are Lanier and Allatoona. These are both Army Corp of Engineer lakes so the "downstream considerations" can cause some impact to the lake levels.

The charts below show the pretty steep drop in the lake levels and reports are that Lanier will continue to drop by 1 ft per week.

http://i530.photobucket.com/albums/dd344/wolfeman131/Slide1-6.jpg
http://i530.photobucket.com/albums/dd344/wolfeman131/Slide2.jpg

[mmandley]

No disrespect but thats only like 10ft er so in each lake. Even the Hagg we goto drops some 30 feet a summer. They fiull it in March and by Sept you have to watch out in a couple places as it gets real shallow.

[sandm]

looks like that allatoona is just dropping for the end of the season? shows 825-830ft from jan-mar and it's at 830 right now? curve looks like it would be within the 25year norm?

our 4 bodies of water that we recreate around here are all corp of engineers water storage sheds. they are doing the same thing-dropping for the winter. main lake-lucky peak just dropped 80ft in a month for the winter..

mike, keep in mind that 10ft in some lakes is a pertty large % drop when the lake may only be 30ft deep to begin with. our lakes out west are much different from what they deal with in the south.

[KSmith]

Vast areas of Allatoona are mudflats now as Allatoona isn't very deep in many areas. When full it'll hit around 90 feet by the damn and 60 or so in some places, but largely it is pretty shallow and lots of peaks and valleys in bottom topography, the peaks being the issue when you lose 10-20 feet. It is an annual draw down in preperation for storage during the winter rainy season. The possible problem is the forecast drought. So far Allatoona is okay and within the normal averages, as long as it doesn't drop below 825 elevation and we get rain this winter we'll probably be okay, but the rain needs to start up in at least average levels really soon or we'll be flying past 825... Lanier is another story as it has more demands placed on it, downstream and local...

[rdlangston13]

http://livingston.uslakes.info/Level.asp

our main lake is only 3.9 feet low but if you look at the graph this is not the trend, the lake usually stays pretty level year round. 3.9 feet does not sound like alot but when the area where you ride is only 10 ft deep its alot. luckily the river that feeds our lake is still 30 ft deep so we can ride in it while the lake is empty but it sucks having to trailer the boat all the way to the river launch ramp every day when you are supposed to be on water front property