Lake Texoma flooded

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Lake Texoma where I have a dry boat storage facility and do almost all our boating has reached an all time flood level right now. Being the 11th largest manmade lake in the US means that there are many of us boaters, fisherman, marinas, restaurants, local businesses, etc that are being negatively impacted. When the Corps of Engineers built the lake in the mid 1940s, their predictions were that the lake level would only go over the spillway every 100 years. This is now the 4th time with flooding over the spillway in 1957, 1990, 2007 and now the worst in 2015. Here is a link to the Texoma levels which is now flowing more than 5' over the 1/4 mile wide spillway.

http://www.swt-wc.usace.army.mil/DENI.lakepage.html

To add insult to injury, I can now not fly my newest UAV (drone) over the dam/spillway area according to the Corps signs. If any of you are thinking about getting a UAV, I would highly recommend the new DJI Phantom 3 Professional. It has some incredible features, range and video capabilities. You will want a really good tablet like an iPad 2 Air to take advantage of its features.

I will have to live vicariously through the rest of you guys for most of this year.

[Conquistador_del_mar]

I should add that the water over the spillway is in addition to the 100,000 cubic feet/second that is being released through the floodgates.

[Conquistador_del_mar]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_WXpH1_NV8

[Conquistador_del_mar]

It seems to be cresting tonight. Here are a couple pictures from this afternoon from my drone over Highport Marina. There is nothing showing on the islands except a few treetops.

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Lake Texoma flooded to an all time high of about 5.6' over the spillway and went down to about 2.5' below the spillway until Tropical Depression Bill took it back over the spillway this afternoon for another all time record - going over the spillway twice in one year! The Corps of Engineers predicted it to go over the spillway once every 100 years. This makes 5 times already since 1945!

[Ghost]

Hope everyone's okay and the silver lining is water for all the boaters down in TX who've been living with the lakes dried up.

[Greg Guimond]

Bill, those pictures are starting to remind me of the days after Sandy up here in NYC. Hope your business is not affected. I have plenty of garage space to store your 23 for the season if you'd like to get it out of harms way. I could pull it out of there this weekend.

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Thank you for your well wishes. My business is dry boat storage which has not been adversely affected, but I am feeling for all the local businesses that rely on the summer boating for much of their yearly income - a total bust this year. It is starting to look like the record might be broken again as the recent rain waters continue to flow down the Red River from the west and Wa****a River from the north.

http://www.swt-wc.usace.army.mil/DENI.lakepage.html

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Here is a picture I took yesterday afternoon after the Corps took down their no fly signs at Denison Dam/Lake Texoma. The water is right at 5' going over the spillway and is flowing at about 135,000 cubic feet/second out of the floodgates. This is from my DJI Phantom 3 Professional during an 18 minute flight.

[Marlin275]

This intake vortex is, according to the uploader, 8 feet in diameter and capable of sucking in a whole boat.
Why is it doing that? Well, because the water drains out through the Denison Dam, to make sure things don't overflow.
And if you fell into it, you'd almost certainly be crushed by the pressure.


https://youtu.be/5hRSvVfAha0

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Marlin,
Cool that you brought up that link. While I was taking video, I accidentally got the vortex whirlpool during a video that I didn't even notice until watching the video later. Here is a screenshot from the video. It is not visible from land since it is on the other side of the intake structure.

[Conquistador_del_mar]

Here is a video I made and uploaded to Vimeo of the Lake Texoma dam, vortex, floodgate waters, spillway, etc. It has had a huge number of views including worldwide since I am a member of some worldwide aerial drone forums. I thought some of you guys might enjoy it. Be sure to watch it in HD with your screen maximized to see the 4k resolution. Bill

https://vimeo.com/132503699

[MOP]

Bummer seeing all those boats that can't go out and play, you guys have had lousy luck either too dry or this.