After nearly two years of record-breaking drought, Lake Travis has now enjoyed one of its wettest September-November on record.

That’s the word from Bob Rose, Chief Meteorologist for the Lower Colorado River Authority.

However, although the drought may be done, Central Texas water tables are still challenged.
“In the overall scheme of things, the drought has ended, but the hydrological aspect of the drought — lake and aquifer levels — has not really ended,” Rose said. “If you look at the latest National Drought Monitor [www.drought.noaa.gov], you will see that there isn’t any drought whatsoever depicted in Texas.”
The reason is the nearly 17 inches of rain that fell during the past three months. Some areas in Central Texas have seen more than 20 inches of rainfall over the same period.
“This hasn’t just been a wet fall — it has been one of the wettest ever on record,” Rose said, who added it ranked among the top 10 wettest ever in the region.”
Yet area water supplies remain in peril.
“But our water supplies have not been replenished,” Rose continued. “It is going to take quite a bit more rain to fix the situation. The level of Lake Travis is 652 — but that is 29 feet away from being full. Lake Buchanan is still 16 feet low, so we have a ways to go. It will take several more rain events to bring the lakes and aquifer back.”
However, Rose is predicting that El Niño, a periodic change in the atmosphere and ocean of the tropical Pacific region that impacts weather patterns in the southern U.S., will prove even more prolific as winter sets in.
“Long range weather forecasting has improved,” Rose said. “El Niño has still not peaked yet. It is still slowly strengthening. It has reached moderate status and sometime in December, it will peak in intensity. However, the effects of El Niño will be felt well into the spring.”
Rose has been looking at the record books to see El Niño’s typical impact on the region’s weather.
“It’s never going to be exact, but it should be somewhat similar,” Rose said. “But we seem to be in a textbook El Niño type of pattern.”
To refill Lake Travis, the rain will need to be largely concentrated upstream on the Colorado River within the Highland Lakes watershed.
Although the recent drought was most often compared to the 1950s, once that weather event was completed, Lake Travis refilled quickly.
“After the 50s drought, Lake Travis was not all that far down,” Rose said. “It is interesting because after 1952, there was a big flood that came down the Pedernales River. Lake Travis slowly filled around that time.”
But that was followed by another drought.
“Even in 1956-57, Lake Travis never dipped below the 650s, so it never got that low,” Rose said. “After that, the lake was struck by a flood event.”
Rose said the drought of 2000 is a better comparison to the current situation. That year, the lake fell to a level of 640 and filled over a longer period of time.
Last March, LCRA declared the drought as the worst since 1917-18, surpassing the drought of the 1950s, long-since considered the bellwether dry spell of for Lake Travis. In 1917, a mere 15.56 inches of rain was recorded in the area, according to LCRA’s Mark Jordan, who manages the authority’s river basins.