Wheres all this water coming from.

[Walleye Express]

FYI for you guys who didn't know. The Army Corps of Engineers have predicted that Lake Hurons (Saginaw Bay) water levels will come up 8 inches during the peak months of July/August this season. The U.P. and Canadian snow pac this winter must have been a lot more than anybody thought, as we get most of our water loss supliment from that region. And hopefully the downward trend will start the other way. This last statement was mine. I'm very glad, as I was having a little trouble holding my breath during that 1/4 mile (up on plane) dash to the channels end the last few years. Capt: Dan.

[perchjerker]

I heard last night that the UP of Michigan got 300" of snow this season, ahd its still coming down.

Good news for a change.

[MIke2]

The good news is that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are at the same level. If Huron goes up, so will Michigan. Maybe I wont need to carry waders in my boat to get over the sandbars whe fishing Bay de Noc next fall.

Mike

[FJH1]

It's good news provided that the snow wasn't a byproduct of evaporation from Lake Superior :-)... I remember going up the the U.P. for cross country ski races and we couldn't see the stop signs because of the depth of the snow. As far as I know, Lake Michigan did not freeze over this winter, and hasn't for many winters, this results in evaporation, some of which is dumped as snow on the west shore of the state of Michigan. My boss owns a million dollar home on the shores of Lake Michigan and he has more beach than ever. I do hope these lake levels come up though. Oh well, food for thinking until we can get on the water.

Best Regards,

FJH

[Sunshine]

Here's the whole scoop as reported by The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on March 21st. Enjoy


Water levels rise on Great Lakes

Lakes Michigan, Huron get boost from February precipitation

By MEG JONES and JESSICA HANSEN of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: March 20, 2002

Lake Michigan's denizens of the deep might notice the ceiling of their home is getting higher.

Great Lakes water levels have been well below their long-term historic averages for several years, but this year, they're getting higher. Above-average precipitation during February boosted water levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which are always the same height because the lakes are connected by the Straits of Mackinac. That's good news for shippers, which have carried less cargo because of shallow shipping lanes, as well as marinas, plagued by slowly shrinking harbors, and boaters, worried about sand bars. In the last half of 2001, water levels remained close to their midsummer peak instead of sharply declining - something that's happened every year since 1997. That means the water level on the two lakes was 9 inches higher at the beginning of this year compared with a year ago.

By July, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is predicting lakes Michigan and Huron could rise up to 8 inches above their current level. "Lakes have a seasonal decline, usually in the fall they drop off," said Keith Kompoltowicz, a Army Corps of Engineers meteorologist based in Detroit. But last year, between September and November, Kompoltowicz said, Lakes Michigan and Huron got 4% more rainfall than usual. "Instead of going into decline, it kind of plateaued a bit," he said. Although the expected 8-inch increase will certainly help, Lake Michigan is still below its long-term average height. Last month, the lake was recorded at 576 feet above sea level - 2 feet below the long-term average.

To get back to levels of a few years ago would take a lot of rain and snow, said Philip Keillor, coastal engineering specialist with the Sea Grant Institute in Madison. "What we need is wetter-than-average months on the lakes. It takes precipitation and runoff (from snow) to get the water level up," Keillor said. "Evaporation is really an issue in the fall when we get that cold, dry Canadian air blowing over the water, and there was concern this year because we didn't have the ice cover" to prevent evaporation, Keillor said. Ice normally acts as a lid on the lakes and prevents water from evaporating. Even though there wasn't much ice on Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, Keillor said, there apparently wasn't much evaporation or perhaps enough rain fell to counter the normal decline. The Great Lakes usually can count on snow piling up on the shores and melting in the spring. But there wasn't much snow in the Great Lakes basin, and what snow there was came from the lakes themselves. "Most were lake-effect snows (when) water was taken out of the lake and deposited on the land," said Cynthia Sellinger, a hydrologist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. "It's not always lost to the system, but with the mild winter that snow evaporated and was lost to the basin," Sellinger said. Even though the lakes are going up only a few inches, shippers that depend on the Great Lakes to move iron ore, cement, road salt and other commodities will take as much as they can get. The biggest ships can carry 270 tons of cargo for every inch of draft - the amount of space between the waterline and the bottom of the ship.

The connecting channels to the Soo Locks, which link Lake Superior with Lakes Michigan and Huron, have been getting shallower since 1997, which means ships can't carry as much cargo. Smaller cargoes mean smaller profits. At the beginning of the 1998 shipping season, which typically starts with the opening of the Soo Locks on March 15, the recommended draft for ships was 25 feet 11 inches, said Glen Nekvasil, vice president of corporate communications for the Lake Carriers Association. Two years later it was only 24 feet 5 inches, a loss of 18 inches. That meant 5,000 fewer tons of cargo each ship could carry.
"Inches mean something on the Great Lakes," Nekvasil said. "To solve the problems of low water, we need more than just a few inches here and there, but anything is welcome."

[tnt]

I don't know where it comes from but I have noticed the water is already higher around Brest Bay. The water in the Marina is probably a foot higher than it was this time last year.

[Little Fish]

Those who are interested in Great Lakes water levels can find this info at the Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services (CO-OPS)Homepage (http://co-ops.nos.noaa.gov). I track the locations that affect me at that site.