Falls Lake
We enjoy spending time at Falls Lake, behind our house, when the weather is nice. It's just a short hike down the hill, and no matter how many times I have walked down there during my life, I almost always see something interesting.
In the fall of 2007, Raleigh experienced one of the worst droughts ever. The city of Raleigh uses approximately 40 million gallons of water every day from Falls Lake, and during this drought season, they have been taking about twice that! On top of that, we did not get any significant rain for months. It is interesting to see the effect of the rise and fall of the water level on our little section of the lake. It seemed like every time we visited "our" lake, the environment was completely different. Keep in mind, when looking at the pictures, that the water usually fills up this whole area - basically from tree line to tree line.
September 2, 2007
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The lake dried up slowly, without rainfall, so that although it is hard to see in the pictures, the water is actually flowing in those shallow creeks (about 5 inches wide and only an inch or two deep). <-- Click to see more pictures from September 2, 2007 - 16 pictures |
September 8, 2007
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Even less water... <-- Click to see more pictures from September 8, 2007 - 12 pictures |
September 15, 2007
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We only had a very brief rain, but it was enough to increase the flow through the channel and carve out a larger "creek" (where the lake used to be). The channel is about 3-4 feet wide here, and as you can see, Dixie can actually get in the water and get wet (although not much swimming because even her short little legs still touch bottom easily). <-- Click to see more pictures from September 15, 2007 - 5 pictures |
September 29, 2007
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Haven't had any rain so what was already pretty shallow is not even shallower. Still no swimming for Dixie and Harley. And the main body of water, which you can see out towards the Six Forks Road bridge, is getting smaller and smaller - almost just a pond around the bridge now. <-- Click to see more pictures from September 29, 2007 - 8 pictures |
October 13, 2007
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Still no rain - you'll notice our nice green field in the lake bed is now aging and turning brown. <-- Click to see more pictures from October 13, 2007 - 5 pictures |
October 28, 2007
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We finally got rain!! It rained slowly for 3 whole days with an occasional downpour here and there. You can tell by looking at the channel that a large volume of water ran through our area and washed up several large sandbars and cut a larger canal through it. The main body of water up by the bridge didn't seem to get a whole lot bigger. It was very interesting to see how the lay of the land changed so dramatically in the section behind our house - with the sandbars and larger channel. Dixie finally found a spot to swim in!! <-- Click to see more pictures from October 28, 2007 - 9 pictures |
February 3, 2008
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The lake has not been changing much in the last few months. We've had a few rains, but not much. For the most part the lake level stays somewhere around 8.5 feet low, and the terrain generally looks like this... <-- Click to see more pictures from February 3, 2008 - 7 pictures |
April 14, 2008
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So despite the "experts" saying that it was going to take years for Falls Lake to return to normal, here we are just a few months later... back to normal height. The dogs and the fish are thrilled. <-- Click to see more pictures from April 19, 2008 - 9 pictures |