I’ve been watching Lake Mead rise remarkably as a result of last week’s storm that blew through Nevada before drenching the Virgin River watershed on the Arizona-Nevada-Utah border area. It looks like Mead will finish December at a surface elevation of about 1086.25 feet above sea level, 2 feet above the level forecast a month ago. That translates to about 170,000 extra acre feet of water.
The flow on the Virgin was remarkable. At the gauge near Littlefield, Arizona, flow at this time of year is typically about 100 cubic feet per second. On Dec. 20, it peaked at at something like 27,000 cfs (they think – tough to measure accurately in conditions like that):
USGS Stream Flow Measurement on Virgin River near Littlefield, AZ, Dec. 2010
Or, seen another way:
Great combination of hydrograph and video!
Wow! I read last week that Zion NP was closed and evacuated; I can’t imagine that much water shooting through the Narrows!
Pingback: River Beat: What a Difference a Month Makes : jfleck at inkstain