The road to a dam fix!

Only one small gate section remained up (far left)

Forsyth MO. - On June the 28th, 2019, the Powersite dam suffered a problem when a piece of debris managed to sever a pneumatic line that held the top portion of a moveable gate in the up position. After the failure, water levels on Taneycomo Lake to drop several feet from about 702' to 699' above mean sea level. This caused many docks to end up resting on the mud bottom all along the thirteen mile length of the lake. After that it was a waiting game as repairs could not be effected until the water level on the Bull Shoals side of the dam dropped to at least 685 feet!

So, a reasonable question might be, 'How long will we have to wait?'

Well, assuming a typical dry summer stretch that is often seen in July and August, the answer becomes one of simply looking at trend lines. That is, extending the average rate of the drop of water levels over a period of time in order to extrapolate how far in the future you have to go to get to that magic number 685! Here's the current graphic;

Note that if you click on the above graphic, you can see that the water level should have fallen to 685 feet by about August the 12th! That's assuming no heavy rains and a relatively constant rate of release at the Bull Shoals dam. A nice long dry spell all across the region could speed things up a bit, especially if the Mississippi also goes down to more normal levels!

Update: July 27 - Newly established water level trends would seem to indicate that Bull Shoals could drop to acceptable levels for a dam repair by early August.

  Update: July 29 - Gates had been repaired and water levels on Taneycomo were coming back up!

This media release from Liberty Utilities: 'Crews were able to safely access flood damages at our Ozark Beach dam yesterday, July 29, at 11 a.m. Crews were able to replace a damaged airline, which when repaired, allowed all three sections of flood gates to be raised. Taneycomo water levels reached their normal level of 699.75 ft. by 2 p.m. Until the Bull Shoals lake levels drop, water will continue to go over the dam rather than through our generators. Liberty Utilities personnel are evaluating the incident and options for preventing similar flood damage in the future.

Plant Manager, Randy Richardson, says, “I’d like to thank everyone for their patience, and I’d like to thank our crews for their quick work once lake levels allowed for safe repairs. Improvements made to the dam in 2008 allowed us to make repairs more quickly than in past floods, and we will continue to look for ways to strengthen our equipment and improve service and reliability for our customers.”' J. Curtis Communications Media Coordinator-Assoc

Tropical depression likely to form in the Gulf!

NHC: There is a high probability (80%) that a tropical depression is likely to form by the end of the week over the northern Gulf of Mexico. This system also has the potential to produce heavy rainfall along portions of the northern and eastern U.S. Gulf Coast later this week.

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My thoughts: An early and active hurricane season could perhaps spell trouble for the Tri-Lakes group of reservoirs in southwestern Missouri should such a tropical depression ever happen to impact the Gulf of Mexico region, in my opinion. Such systems can sometimes (rarely?) act as a moisture pump that can bring heavier than normal rains to the Central North American states!

Table Rock Lake was currently at 921 feet with a flood pool set at 931'. If water levels were to get that high, the Corps of Engineers would be forced to open the ten Tainter gates two and a half feet allowing 150,000 cubic feet per second of water to be released into Taneycomo which would not be able to hold back any water due to a damaged air bladder mechanism. Such an event could pose problems further downstream. [Note: Repeated attempts to contact the Corps had failed to elicit any useful information concerning repair time estimates.]

Update: July 10 - As was predicted, a tropical depression had formed and its projected path could influence the weather over southwest Mo. Although, as the second graphic below shows, heavy rainfall was not projected for SW MO.

Update: July 11 - Forecast of the effects of tropical storm Barry now appear to show it missing most of southwest and south central Missouri.