{"id":325662,"date":"2026-06-06T15:02:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T15:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/325662\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T15:02:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T15:02:45","slug":"how-has-recent-rainfall-affected-central-texas-lake-levels-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/325662\/","title":{"rendered":"How has recent rainfall affected Central Texas lake levels?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Brief<\/p>\n<p>Water levels in Highland Lakes have improved<\/p>\n<p>Rains in April, May improved drought conditions across region, says LCRA<\/p>\n<p>AUSTIN, Texas &#8211; With all the rain we&#8217;ve been getting, how is that affecting our lake levels?<\/p>\n<p>By the numbers<\/p>\n<p>Water levels in the Highland Lakes have improved over the past year.<\/p>\n<p>Lake Buchanan is up about 20 feet from last year and is 100 percent full at 1,019.88 ft msl (mean sea level) a<a data-ylk=\"slk:s of June 5;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" href=\"https:\/\/hydromet.lcra.org\/riverreport\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">s of June 5<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Lake Travis is up about 33 feet from last year and is 82 percent full at 669.91 ft msl.<\/p>\n<p>LCRA says the rainfall totals projected over the next few days are relatively low, so they don&#8217;t expect much impact on lake levels in the Highland Lakes. However, there is a possibility LCRA could open floodgates if there is a significant amount of rainfall in the Upper Basin. Hydrologists will monitor inflows.<\/p>\n<p>LCRA says rains in April and May improved drought conditions across the region.<\/p>\n<p>Rain has increased soil moisture, decreased fire danger, and watered yards. Water supplies are also better than they were a year ago, thanks to rains this year and last July.<\/p>\n<p>Local perspective<\/p>\n<p>Robert Weiss, owner and operator of Lake Travis Scuba and manager of Nitro Swim, says overall, people are glad to have the rain.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re glad to have the extra water It gives us greater depths in the lake for those divers that like to go deep,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>He says rainfall doesn&#8217;t affect their visibility right away. It usually takes a week after rainfall for them to see the effects.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Any of that murky water, that muddy water from when it was really rushing hard up in the upper channel of the lakes, that stuff hasn&#8217;t really reached down to us yet, but soon it will, and then we&#8217;ll probably have some less visibility,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>What you can do<\/p>\n<p>Higher water levels also means some adjustments on the surface.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People out in the lake who live out here, they&#8217;re having to adjust their docks and make sure that their docks don&#8217;t get affected by that lake rise,&#8221; Weiss said.<\/p>\n<p>Plus, people should be careful because where the water starts and stop may change.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Just be very cautious of the fact that lake&#8217;s going up, and that&#8217;s changing the shoreline area and walking and the elevation, so be careful about that,&#8221; Weiss said.<\/p>\n<p>Also never swim alone, always wear a life jacket, and be aware of hidden hazards.<\/p>\n<p>People can also sign up for Highland Lakes flood operation notifications through <a data-ylk=\"slk:LCRA&#039;s Flood Operations Notification Service.;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lcra.org\/fons\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">LCRA&#8217;s Flood Operations Notification Service.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Source<\/p>\n<p>Information in this report comes from reporting\/interviews by FOX 7 Austin&#8217;s Angela Shen<\/p>\n<p>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Brief Water levels in Highland Lakes have improved Rains in April, May improved drought conditions across region,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,7607,31184,116465,68504,9442,10612,31249,116466,27,35723],"class_list":["post-325662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-drought-conditions","tag-highland-lakes","tag-lake-buchanan","tag-lake-levels","tag-lake-travis","tag-lcra","tag-rainfall-totals","tag-robert-weiss","tag-texas","tag-water-levels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}