Lake Erie level up 2 feet...........

http://www.buffalonews.com/city-regi...ummer-20141213



Your boat won’t be hitting Lake Erie rocks next summer


Lake Erie dropped so low two years ago that someone along the Angola shoreline put an American flag on an exposed piece of timber in the water to warn boaters of “a graveyard of boulders” lurking just beneath the surface.

This coming summer, those rocks shouldn’t be much of a threat.

Lake Erie’s water level – at or near historic lows in 2012 – has surged back from all the snow and rain in the past year.

“You can’t see the rocks or the dock. That’s all covered,” said Donna Zanett, a beachfront resident of Grandview Bay.

The Lake Erie water level now measures 2 feet higher after gaining back the equivalent of some 5 million Olympic swimming pools of water.

Data released last week prompted Great Lakes scientists to declare an end to low water.

“This essentially brings to an end this 15-year period of below-average water levels,” said Drew Gronewold, a hydrologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

September marked the first time since the late 1990s that waters levels in all of the Great Lakes were above average, said Keith Kompoltowicz, chief of watershed hydrology for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Come springtime, people will notice Lake Erie beaches are not nearly as expansive as in recent years.

But water will fill into low-lying bays and harbors, so those who have vessels bigger than a canoe are more likely to navigate them safely. With boaters able to navigate channels once too shallow in recent years, that could mean better fishing, Kompoltowicz said.

For those using fixed docks, ladders may no longer be needed to descend into boats.

“What people will notice, if they have a boat at a marina, is the boat might be sitting a little higher at their dock,” Kompoltowicz said.

Better yet, skippers will be less likely to scrape the bottoms of their boats on a rocky lake bottom, as often happened in 2012.

“Everybody was banging their transoms and motors,” outdoor columnist Dave Barus recalled.

Barus, who writes under the pen name “Forest Fisher,” said the higher water levels – combined with the dredging of harbors in Barcelona and Sturgeon Point – improved conditions for boaters last summer.

“We had a little more water,” said Barus of East Aurora.

Scientists at SUNY Buffalo State’s Great Lakes Center are “a little better off” at their Porter Avenue launch site, said Mark D. Clapsadl, the center’s field station manager.

“There were points in time when we couldn’t have gotten our bigger boats out,” Clapsadl said. “It wasn’t as bad. It was still a little difficult for the bigger boats. We’re kind of right on that edge. The small boats are not a problem right now.”

The rising water also means good news for the lake shipping industry. Freighters transported smaller loads of limestone, iron ore, sand, cement and other cargo in recent years to keep from running aground. Now the boats can carry larger loads.

Shoreline concern


But higher water also brings concerns, notably for the shoreline.

Kompoltowicz confirmed “some growing concern for shoreline erosion.”

Quick increases in water levels mean an equally quick reduction in beachfront property along the 10,000 miles of Great Lakes’ shoreline, including along Lake Erie.

There also is a greater chance for more low-lying lakeshore flooding during seiche events – such as the one that occurred during the dramatic meltoff of last month’s double lake-effect snowstorm. Strong southwest winds blew Lake Erie water toward Buffalo, causing temporary, but rapid, increases in lake levels.

What happens after spring 2015 remains guesswork.

“It is uncertain if, years from now, water levels will continue to rise, or if they will fall again to below-average levels,” said Gronewold of NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Predicting precipitation, watershed runoff and evaporation – the main drivers of water levels – is challenging, and forecasts are further complicated by “large-scale climate forces,” like last winter’s Arctic polar vortex, according to a NOAA release.

Officials from NOAA and the Corps of Engineers presented their findings during a teleconference this week with reporters from around the Great Lakes region.

“The significant rises we’ve seen … have been fueled by very wet conditions across the Great Lakes basin,” Kompoltowicz said.

Impact of other lakes


Reports show that over the last 12 months, rain or snowmelt on each lake or watershed was above average.

Though the figures seem modest for Lake Erie and Lake Ontario – 0.35 inches and 0.12 inches, respectively – the precipitation was above average by 2.5 inches for the Lake Michigan-Lake Huron basin and almost 3 inches above normal for Lake Superior.

The higher levels in the other lakes are important for Buffalo, because the upper lakes feed Lake Erie.

“Typically, water levels rise in the spring, they peak in the summertime, and they fall in the fall,” Gronewold said.

Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, however, continued their rise into September, October and November.

“That’s something that is very unusual for this time of year,” Gronewold said.

The streak has meant that the basin, which feeds Lake Erie through the St. Clair River, has gained 3 feet of water in just two years, after setting an all-time record for low water in December 2012.

It ties a previous record for water gained in 23 months dating back to the 1950s. Lake Superior’s gain over the same time – almost 2.5 feet – is “the highest net rise in recorded history,” Gronewold said.

In many ways, the trend is the opposite of another unprecedented streak put up by Lake Erie in 2012.

From its 2012 high in January, Lake Erie’s water levels decreased for 12 consecutive months because of a paltry winter snowfall followed by a dry spring and a drought-filled summer.

It was the only time that happened in 95 years of record-keeping by the Army Corps. It put Lake Erie nearly 10 inches below its long-term monthly average by October 2012.

Lake Erie started gaining water back in 2013.

The “net basin supply” of water to Lake Erie – which scientists measure by adding the precipitation onto the surface of the lake and runoff from its watershed minus any evaporation – has been above average in 17 of the last 23 months, including every month from April to October this year, the Army Corps reported.

By the end of last month, Lake Erie’s water level was nearly 11 inches above its long-term average – a nearly two foot swing in as many years.

“The wet conditions that have been experienced on the lakes have affected Lake Erie as well,” Kompoltowicz said.