Posted: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 06:00 PM - 10,852 Readers

By: Rich Segal

The drought has caused water levels at two major Central Texas lakes to drop, leaving all but two of the public boat ramps closed to boaters.

The Lower Colorado River Authority talked to local meteorologists Wednesday to discuss their latest projections for lake levels and water supply.

"From a weather perspective, our weather is just as bad, if not even worse, than the drought in the 1950s," LCRA Chief Meteorologist Bob Rose said. "Our rainfall is about as low as it was in the 1950s, but what's really interesting is, from the temperature standpoint, temperatures are much warmer now than the period in the 50s."

Rose said the combination of the extreme heat and lack of rainfall makes for a very severe drought, in fact, one of the most severe droughts the LCRA has on record.

"During the early part of the 50s, we actually set our all-time record low on Lake Travis, even our combined storage of both Buchanan and Travis," Rose said. "Right now we're not near that, but still we're at the fourth lowest level in recorded history."

Rose said given that, Central Texas still has plenty of water.

"The combined storage of both of our lakes is right about 50 percent," he said. "They're about half full, half empty, depending how you want to look at it. We still have a lot of water for both municipal needs and for recreation."

Rose said there's also a light at the end of the tunnel.

"El Nino is now with us, and lot of our long-range models are all pointing toward a change in the weather pattern, occurring sometime this fall, probably about October going into November, with us going toward a pattern of above-normal rain," he said. "Whether these are drought breaking rains we don't know."

Still, Rose said above-normal rains is really good news for the Central Texas area.

So even though water levels aren't as bad as they could be, and more rainfall is expected in the fall, it's still a good idea to conserve water.