by Konnie LeMay

Whither Our Water?
The Year Is Starting Out Right for Raising Lake Levels

Last summer, things looked bad for the water levels in Lake Superior. Boats were having trouble tying up at some marinas and maritime transportation reduced cargo loads on vessels to keep them from bottoming out in shallower spots.

At some places within Isle Royale National Park, recreational boaters had to climb up to docks rather than step down from their decks as would be normal.

By late summer, Lake Superior hit new monthly low-water records: 600.4 feet in August (the previous record in 1926 was 600.5 feet) and 600.5 feet in September (the previous record low was 600.8 feet in 1926).

Then in late September and early October came the rain … lots of rain.

“In July and August, you could just walk across the river. You didn’t even get the soles of your tennis shoes wet,” says Paul Sundberg, manager of Gooseberry Falls State Park in Minnesota. On October 18 after two days of rain, “the water just really, really hit” the river.

The swollen Gooseberry River burst out of its banks and the park had to close access to the middle and lower falls along the boardwalk stairs. “They looked like fish ladders. Each step had water over it.”

Those fall storms seemed to set a good direction for this winter in regards to inching the lake’s water levels away from those record lows.

In January 2008, the month’s mean average water level was 600.7 feet, higher than the 599.8-foot record low of 1926 but less than the long-term monthly average of 601.5 feet.

Despite colder temperatures this winter, ice formed mostly near shore, the Mining Gazette in Houghton, Michigan, reported in February. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) survey showed less ice cover in mid-February 2008 than during the same time in 2007, the newspaper reported.

A good snowpack around the lake may help with water levels, but the ice would be helpful, according to Keith Kompoltowicz, a meteorologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. “You really want to see ice cover starting to form early in the winter. … It essentially puts a lid on any evaporation that starts to occur.” You don’t want to see little or no ice with nasty cold in January and February. When the air is much colder than the open lake, which retains heat from the summer, more evaporation occurs.

Fall and winter precipitation have been favorable for slight rises in water levels. Basinwide rainfall in September-October of about 10 inches led to a 9-inch rise in water levels.

“The storm track this year has been what we need to have water levels start climbing back toward average,” Keith says. “We need several more winters like this one.”

On Lake Superior, the lowest level ever recorded was 599.5 feet during April 1926. The highest recorded level was 603.4 feet in October 1985.

Most record monthly low levels for Lake Superior came in 1925 and 1926. There is a question, however, about whether current low levels compare “oranges to oranges” when looking back to 1926. Since the mid-1940s, two water diversions into the lake basin from the Hudson Bay watershed raised Lake Superior 1 to 2 inches, so when the levels dip within 1 or 2 inches of the old record, they may technically already have exceeded it.

Meanwhile, as this spring approaches, Paul Sundberg anticipates a spectacular waterfall season.

“We’re going to have a fair amount of water coming through the rivers this spring.”

At his state park, Gooseberry river and falls usually have their ice release around early April, though temperature and rain conditions affect that. Paul has worked at the park since 1983 and only once has witnessed a spring release when chunks of ice “the size of cars and vans” thundered down river along with some tumbled trees.

The spring roar of a waking Lake Superior-region river is something, says Paul, that you will never forget.

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