Bull Shoals water levels may hold steady!

River Run Park in trouble!

Forsyth MO. - As a local who likes to enjoy two parks that grace the area, I had taken a keen interest in tracking the current rapid rise of waters in the the Bull Shoals Lake. As of this post, one of the two parks, River Run had begun to flood out. However, Shadowrock was still high and dry. At least for now.

Minor drop in level observed on Feb 25

 What was encouraging to me was fact that the rate of increase had slowed quite a bit. even to the point where I could hope to see it decline a bit in the later part of February. The flies in the ointment here were two; water levels at Beaver Lake continued to be about two feet above full pool and release rates at the Bull Shoals dam near the Arkansas border were still being restricted due to the time of year. And, as spring was still a few weeks off, I found that troubling.

The good news was that, while rain would likely occur over the next ten days, it also appeared to be on the light side of things! So, if we don't get much rain and if Bull Shoals dam does increase their releases and so on and so forth.... at least one of the parks might be spared from flooding.

Note: My estimates of when a park might flood out are just that, estimates.

Update: Army Corps of Engineers to Open Two Gates at Table Rock Dam on Tuesday, March 5, 2019. They needed to perform maintenance on two turbines - I was not sure if this would affect Bull Shoals.

Will Forsyth MO area Parks flood in 2019?

Forsyth MO. - I was very much looking forward to a few new features in my small town of Forsyth Missouri in southwest Missouri this coming spring. A new bridge over Bull Shoals, a new roundabout and two parks that all looked to be in great shape!

But wait! There might be a fly in the ointment and that was the potential for both River Run and Shadowrock Parks to be flooded out early in the coming 2019 season! How could this happen, you ask?

Click to expand

Well, my fears grew somewhat when I realized that the water levels in Bull Shoals as well as the other two reservoirs (Beaver and Table Rock Lakes) upstream of it were much higher than they normally were (see graphic above). And with the spring season not even here, I noted that River Run was already becoming invaded on its northwestern shore! I just could not see how the Corps of engineers were going to manage their way out of flooding problems even if we have a typical amount of rain in March and April. (Perhaps they were hoping for a mini drought to occur....).

Graphic 2

As I considered the situation, and the fact that our rainfall had not been all that excessive over past six months (graphic 2), I turned my focus on the Bull Shoals dam down by the Arkansas border. I had to guess that they were simply unable to release as much water as they normally would possibly due to the time of year, when water absorbing foliage was not present. (Either that was the case or there were other issues occurring somewhere between that point and the gulf that I was unaware of...).

Whatever, the answer to the flooding question was going to resolve itself over the next couple of months, of that I was certain, I was just hoping for a chance to get in some 'Park' time early in the spring before anything of a wet nature happened.

Update: Feb 20, 2019 - River Run Park. The flooding of part of this park had begun!

Update: Feb 24 - With just a few days to go in the month, it was looking as though the River Run Park area would be flooded out! And, it wasn't even the start of the spring season! We'd really need a serious dry spell for, say, the first few weeks of March to get the levels back down.