Alas, Winter Forecast Isn’t All Wet
By Bruce Henderson, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Sep. 28–Winter may offer little relief to the Carolinas drought, experts said Thursday.
La Nina, the cooling of equatorial Pacific waters now weakly forming, shifts the jet stream worldwide. It historically brings drier-than-normal conditions to the Southeast, state climatologist Ryan Boyles told the N.C. Drought Management Council.
“Those are not good chances for having a wet winter, which is what we would really like to recharge groundwater,” he said.
If that happens, reservoirs and groundwater couldn’t recover in time to cope with rising temperatures and water demand next spring and summer.
As the end of the hurricane season nears (Nov. 30, officially), Boyles said, hopes for a dousing from a tropical storm are fading. The National Weather Service doesn’t expect significant rain in the next two weeks.
The Charlotte region relies heavily on lakes and rivers for drinking water. But groundwater provides much of the water in streams, called “base flow,” that rainfall supplements.
On Wednesday, groundwater at Charlotte’s Hornets Nest Park was almost 2 feet lower than a year earlier. Streams are down statewide and may rival levels from 2001, Charlotte’s driest year on record, said Curtis Weaver of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Evidence of the region’s exhausted streams: McAlpine Creek near Pineville on Thursday morning flowed at less than 1 percent of its typical volume for this time of year.
“It looks like, unless a miracle happens by Oct. 1, this will be the driest September that we have recorded in our system,” added George Galleher, a Duke Energy hydro operations engineer. Duke manages the Catawba River reservoirs that supply most of the region’s drinking water.
Lake James, at the top of Duke’s chain, was 7.7 feet below full pond Thursday; Lake Norman, 6.5 feet; Lake Wylie, 5.3 feet. Jocassee, a Duke lake in the N.C. mountains, was down 25 feet.
Even more important are the levels at which water intakes for municipalities, industries and power plants can’t operate at full capacity. Mountain Island Lake, Charlotte’s major drinking water source, and Lake Hickory were both within 6 inches of those critical levels Thursday.
Even so, said Duke spokesman Marilyn Lineberger, “we would not consider this a dire situation.” In 2002, when a four-year drought ended, Mountain Island’s levels were lower, she said.
Conservation in the Catawba basin has saved enough water that tougher restrictions apparently will be delayed, Galleher told the drought council.
With lake levels dropping about 2 percent a week, a one-step upgrade to Stage 3 restrictions had been expected within about a week. Duke now says the restrictions might not change until late October.
Patrols Tap Water Violators
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities issued 56 citations through 11 a.m. Thursday. The utility issued 70 Wednesday, when the lawn watering ban went into effect, and has issued 701 since restrictions began Aug. 28.
Water consumption Wednesday was 111 million gallons, below the 123 million gallon conservation goal.
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