Water We Gonna Do Now? (Or..Welcome to year 8 of drought...)

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AndyH

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 23, 2010
Messages
6,388
Location
San Antonio
http://www.kxan.com/dpp/news/local/Llano-now-in-Stage-4-water-restrictions
LLANO, Texas (KXAN) - Suffering its worst drought in more than 50 years, the Llano River is about to run dry. It is the sole source of drinking water for Llano, a town 75 miles west of Austin.

On Monday night, officials with the city of Llano moved to Stage 4 water restrictions.

This means no outdoor watering at all -- no lawn sprinklers, landscaping, filling of pools, even washing cars.

"This has been about the worst drought, period of no rain in decades. It has all of our citizens concerned," said Llano City Manager Finley deGraffenreid.

http://www.wfaa.com/news/local/Kaufman-County-town-runs-out-of-water-127097323.html
KEMP — This small town on the shore of Cedar Creek Reservoir ran out of water on Sunday.
"No water. No water. Zero water," said Kemp Mayor Donald Kile. "We’re in pretty bad shape, to be honest with you." ... The near-record heat wave led to heavy water demand that taxed the town's aging infrastructure. Mayor Kile said there have been 14 breaks in the town's pipeline in the last two and a half weeks due to the extremely dry conditions.

http://www.newswest9.com/story/14630026/west-texas-water-supplier-nearly-dry
LAKE SPENCE - Lake E. V. Spence, one of the Colorado River Municipal Water District's water supplies to West Texas cities like Midland, Odessa, Snyder and Big Spring, is nearly gone.

"It's pretty scary when you go down and look at Spence today," CRMWD General Manager, John Grant, said.

Lake Spence is now less than 2% full and has been given only weeks until it's closed for pumping.
 
The situation in Texas is getting deadly serious. You would think there would be much more media coverage. I read where cattle are dropping in the pastures and even wild animals are dying by the thousands. Now entire towns are running out of water. The longer this continues you'll begin to see mass migration of people to the north. It's happened before.
 
my Dad lives in Mission his wife is from Odessa. the situation is not only Texas its the entire plains area. if you think the cost of life is expensive now. wait until the impact of a 40% crop reduction thru out the Nation's bread basket starts to hit us this winter.

what we have not seen yet is what the price of basic staples will be. right now we are still eating last years harvest. this year's harvest is expected to be much more expensive. some speculating a better than 100% rise in prices. dont be surprised when bread is up to $3 a loaf come next spring
 
Many folks here are hoping for a couple tropical storms to blow through. The kind with light winds but plenty of rain.

I came close to installing a rainwater harvesting system, but for various reasons put it off a year. Dang.
 
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/08/09...ricken-texas-town-to-recycle-urine/?hpt=hp_t2

We all know that recycling is a good thing. But recycling sewage water?
According to Discovery News, the drought in Texas has gotten so desperate that the town of Big Spring is considering recycling toilet water for its 27,000 residents.While it sounds unusual (and more than a little gross) it's not that uncommon.

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/08/10/texas.desperate.to.drink/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1
"I see a lot of humor in it," Grant said. "There was a fella over in Midland that I heard made the comment that at least he gets to drink his beer twice now."


texas_drought_0808.jpg

A weed grows out of the dry cracked bed of O.C. Fisher Lake on July 25, 2011, in San Angelo, Texas. The 5,440-acre (2,200 hectares) lake, which was established to provide flood control and serve as a secondary drinking-water source for San Angelo and surrounding communities, is now dry following an extended drought in the region
 
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVh7z-0oo6o[/youtube]

Texans - note the interview bites in the middle of this...
 
A drought update. First, a collective 'amen' for this morning's thunder storm!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VMpes8EyIw[/youtube]
 
Thought this was topical, hope you don't mind:

Desalination a Big Part of Texas' Water Future

"For many cities, the cost of desalination -- up to four times that of other water treatments, sometimes even more for seawater desalination -- is no longer a deal-breaker."

(Prepare for coal/gas-powered-desalination-to-compensate-for-drought-cause-by-climate-change-due-to-greenhouse-gas-emissions irony.)
=Smidge=
 
windmills could power desalination plants when the demand for electricity is low.

Regarding mass migration of people, they wont head north but eastward to California.. just like it happened to the Okies during the Dust Bowl. Read up on the history, its fascinating.

This part of the country wants to be a prairie or a desert.. with regularly recurring 10 year droughts.
 
Herm said:
This part of the country wants to be a prairie or a desert.. with regularly recurring 10 year droughts.
I'll have to hit my books again. I could have sworn that there was a process of succession where grass gives way to shrubs then to pines then to hardwoods...

Or should I hire a dirt whisperer for more up to date info?

;)
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-debuys/the-age-of-thirst-in-the-_b_1130013.html

Folks, we've already done this:

Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale: biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought. As of summer’s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat. It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.

But we don't have to do this:

By the number of smashed crania and other broken bones in the ruins of the region’s beautiful stone villages, archaeologists judge that the aridifying world of the Mesa Verdeans was fatally afflicted by violence. Warfare and societal breakdown, evidently driven by the changing climate, helped end that culture.

Let's make another choice.
 
my dad lives in Mission TX a bit removed from the drought but his wife is from Odessa which is smack dab in the middle of it. many many reports of new discoveries both good (artifacts from the 17th and 18th century and before) and bad (missing people either dead or murdered) from low water levels revealing things that had been hidden for decades and in some cases, centuries.

so i guess there is a bit of a silver lining to all this.
 
AndyH said:
I'll have to hit my books again. I could have sworn that there was a process of succession where grass gives way to shrubs then to pines then to hardwoods...

Long term droughts are normal in that part of the world.. GW will probably make it worse but I have no idea.
 
Herm said:
AndyH said:
I'll have to hit my books again. I could have sworn that there was a process of succession where grass gives way to shrubs then to pines then to hardwoods...

Long term droughts are normal in that part of the world.. GW will probably make it worse but I have no idea.
The existence of cycles is not in dispute - neither is the expected continuation of the cycles. But the temperature trend within those cycles is up.

Same for my electric bill. It's more expensive in the summer, and less expensive during the short period of time that passes for 'spring' and 'fall' around here. But the overall trend is clear - and it's not going down.

ebill.jpg
 
DaveinOlyWA said:
my dad lives in Mission TX a bit removed from the drought but his wife is from Odessa which is smack dab in the middle of it. many many reports of new discoveries both good (artifacts from the 17th and 18th century and before) and bad (missing people either dead or murdered) from low water levels revealing things that had been hidden for decades and in some cases, centuries.

so i guess there is a bit of a silver lining to all this.
Absolutely - some of the findings could be more of a...blast...than others... ;)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-16023678
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/04/world/europe/germany-city-evacuation

Berlin (CNN) -- Bomb squads in Germany successfully defused on Sunday two bombs and disposed of an additional air-dropped military device that had caused an evacuation of historic proportions in a city in the country's west.
The 45,000 evacuated residents of the city of Koblenz, situated on the Rhine and Moselle Rivers, were allowed to return home.
Workers rendered inert the two bombs, one 4,000-pound "air mine" and a smaller high-density explosive bomb. Then they destroyed a third non-explosive device by way of a controlled detonation, according to the Koblenz fire department.
For 65 years, the Rhine River hid two bombs and an fog-producing device that were dropped by American and British warplanes in the last years of the war. When water levels dropped to record lows last week, the bombs were finally found.
 
AndyH said:
The existence of cycles is not in dispute - neither is the expected continuation of the cycles. But the temperature trend within those cycles is up.

Same for my electric bill. It's more expensive in the summer, and less expensive during the short period of time that passes for 'spring' and 'fall' around here. But the overall trend is clear - and it's not going down.

I would suspect that you would have to show a 50 year range to convince Herm :D
With only five years of data it would be hard to dispel a 10 year cycle. Also, did you correct your plot for inflation?

Still, I think the long-term trend is there an can probably be inferred from the weather data.
 
Just out of curiosity, here are weather data for Texas going back to the 40s:

http://midgewater.twdb.state.tx.us/Evaporation/evap.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

If you look at the data there is no clear trend for that particular data...
Anyway, this page lets you download precipitation/evaporation data for all Texas counties, so you can run your own statistics/weather analysis.. Its quite fun!
 
Very interesting.. look at the bottom of this GIF, I selected area 205 at random.

http://midgewater.twdb.state.tx.us/cgi-bin/Evaporation/parseevap.cgi?quad=205&options=G&submit=SUBMIT" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
 
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