class="single single-post postid-1000 single-format-standard unknown">
FLOW RATES
I hope this is a sign of things to continue to come. As I am sitting down to write this article the streets in Camp Wood are still wet from the rainfall and there is a little flow of water going down the road. It was quite a sight coming into Camp Wood on this Monday morning with two rainbows shining right over town. I am hoping that the rain will continue and put some water back in the Nueces and Frio Rivers, as we took flow reading last week both rivers are in the worst shape we have seen this year.
We are by no means out of the drought with just this little dab of rain so I am still pleading with you to conserve water and continue to pray for rain. The flow rates were taken on September 14th and 15th and many of them were the lowest reading we have seen so far this year.
The Dam Crossing in the Nueces Canyon is not looking well at all; of the 28 sections of the Dam only about 12 of them have any flow going over the top of the Dam. The Dam had a flow rate of 15,174 gpm (gallons per minute) back in April now it is down to 1,200 gpm (gallons per minute).
McDonald Crossing on the Nueces River; flow rate went down from 4,537 gpm (gallons per minute) last month to 4,518 gpm this month and the crossing is not looking very good at all. There is quite a growth of vegetation at the crossing and it just does not look very attractive at this time.
The Rancho Real Crossing on the West Prong of the Frio River showed a slight increase this reading up from 3,344 gpm in August to 3,669 gpm this month. Not sure what is going on here but it is still a long way from where it was this time last year at 8,683 gpm.
The Kent Creek Crossing on Highway 336 North is the most alarming of all the crossings that we check and is down to a flow of 133 gpm. This is down from 204 gpm last month and down from 1,534 gpm in October of last year.
The Mill Creek Crossing on the East prong of the Frio has held pretty consistent this month only dropping 14 gallons per minute to a flow of 4,388 gpm it is still down 1/3 since we began taking readings in May. The May flow was 6,644 gpm at the Mill Creek Crossing.
Leakey Springs is another crossing that is rather alarming at this time with a flow of 632 gpm down from 782 gpm last month. The crossing still looks decent but the flow rate in October of last year was 7,566 gpm so you can see that is quite a reduction.
The Alto Frio Crossing had a flow of 1,721 gpm this month which is a slight increase from last month’s reading of 1,550 gpm. But this is well below the reading of last October which was 24,009 gpm.
The final crossing we checked this month was the one in the Frio River Place Subdivision and the flow was 1,655 gpm down from 1,952 gpm last month. This reading is down considerably from the initial reading we had in June of 3,472 gpm.
These flow rates as you can see are not good especially if you compare to this time last year, but on the bright side at least there is still some flow. I am sure if we went and checked the flows as I am writing this article the readings would be up, but by the time you read this article the middle to end of the week they will be back to the readings from last week. As I said at the beginning of the article continue to conserve where you can and pray for more rain to come.