Like most Central Texas lakes, Canyon Lake’s water level is well below its historical norm as drought continues to drag on. The lake is currently about 60% full. (Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News)
Like most Central Texas lakes, Canyon Lake’s water level is well below its historical norm as drought continues to drag on. The lake is currently about 60% full. (Sam Owens/San Antonio Express-News)
KERR COUNTY — Travis Linscomb stood ankle-deep in Bear Creek, stretching a measuring tape across the clear, shallow water.
He slowly worked his way across the narrow waterway methodically, using a velocimeter to record the speed of the water as it flowed past on its way to the North Fork of the Guadalupe River.
Bear Creek is one of several sites where Linscomb, a natural resources specialist for the Upper Guadalupe River Authority, collects quarterly spring flow measurements.
The Guadalupe rises from springs in Kerr County, then winds its way to Canyon Lake, then flows southeast until it reaches the coast. At gauges all along its banks, from Kerrville to the Gulf, the river these days is flowing at far below its normal rate, a sign of the ongoing drought and insufficient rainfall.
That’s still true despite the huge amounts of rain that wreaked havoc on July 4, sending the Guadalupe River surging to record highs. The river quickly returned to its below-normal flows, where it has remained — just like many other water sources around Central Texas.
Canyon Lake is less than two-thirds full, Medina Lake still sits below 5% and the Edwards Aquifer, San Antonio’s largest water source, started the year with its third-lowest New Year’s Day measurement in nearly a century of record-keeping.
If you think of the region’s water supplies as a bank account, the years of below-average rainfall and unrelenting drought have drained the balance.
«We can have some normal years and be just fine, but we’re spending what we earn,» said Paul Bertetti, the Edwards Aquifer Authority’s senior director of aquifer science research and modeling. «We don’t get a chance to have a lot of savings.»