Lake Level Change

[Jerry Rapp]

I am retired COE and was familiar with the auto river/lake gages. Most are battery powered, charged by solar panel. They take a reading electronically, shoot it up to a satellite, then shoot it back to the data collection computer, in my case, located in Vicksburg, Mississippi. From there, regional(district) offices gather the data for their region and electronically broadcast it. If a battery goes bad, a few birds crap on the solar panel, a boat collides with the sensor in the water, etc, then the readings go wacko. All the gages are backed up by manual gages which requires a real person to go read them, be it a simple board with numbers on it, or a wire weight that is lowered to the water surface. So if you see something wacky, it is probably a malfunction unless flash flooding is going on.

[waterpossum]

I am retired COE and was familiar with the auto river/lake gages. Most are battery powered, charged by solar panel. They take a reading electronically, shoot it up to a satellite, then shoot it back to the data collection computer, in my case, located in Vicksburg, Mississippi. From there, regional(district) offices gather the data for their region and electronically broadcast it. If a battery goes bad, a few birds crap on the solar panel, a boat collides with the sensor in the water, etc, then the readings go wacko. All the gages are backed up by manual gages which requires a real person to go read them, be it a simple board with numbers on it, or a wire weight that is lowered to the water surface. So if you see something wacky, it is probably a malfunction unless flash flooding is going on.

Thanks for your input. I just noticed that the graph now showing is not the same as the one I posted earlier. This was posted as a direct link, which would explain the change.