What a difference a week made for some places in Texas! Parts of Texas experienced massive flooding which resulted in deaths, bridges lost, and at least one dam failure. Many reservoirs experienced dramatic changes in water level, with some becoming full nearly overnight. Possum Kingdom is full and was releasing water into the Brazos, and evacuations are occurring downstream. For the first time since June 2010, the USDA Drought Monitor does not show any severe drought in Texas (and it should be noted that time in 2010 without severe drought lasted only six months.) We have been free of severe drought only 26 months spread out over the last 11 years, and completely free of drought only three months during that same period.

Despite all of this rain and despite the drought relief, for many Texans, it is the same story as last week: The ground is damp, but the lakes are dry. Here is an updated map comparing the new drought index with current lake levels:

The largest red circles represent lakes that are below 25% of capacity, the medium dots are lakes that are between 25 and 50% full, and the smallest dots are lakes which are between 40 and 75%.

A comparison between the USDA Drought Index and Texas Lake Levels.

As you can see, while those along the Brazos are wet, people along the upper reaches of the Colorado River are still dry, even if the drought index has shrunken. With another month of spring left, hopefully things will continue to change for those of us in the dry areas; however, in this area the el niño effect often wanes during the summer before returning during winter. In other words, we may have a wet summer in the western portion of the state, or we may not.

Here is a comparison of May rainfall totals for a few select stations across the drought area. For ease of data collection these are mostly airport locations, so the totals may vary slightly from nearby cities. Notice that other than a few large outliers (Austin at nearly 17 inches of rain for example) that some of the dry areas aren’t that far behind some of the wetter areas. This goes back to my previous post about watersheds: it takes rain in a certain area to influence lake levels.

Rainfall totals so far this May (inches).

Certainly, we are better off today than we were this time last year, but now is not the time to abandon water conservation. In terms of water it seems the state has very few places that Goldilocks would consider just right.

Next week I begin a three part series on how one city in Texas obtains its drinking water. If you enjoyed this post, please surf over to the Instante Mense facebook page and like it.