{"id":241600,"date":"2025-10-21T18:21:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T18:21:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/241600\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T18:21:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T18:21:28","slug":"lake-abilene-dries-up-nearby-lakes-also-declining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/241600\/","title":{"rendered":"Lake Abilene dries up, nearby lakes also declining"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ongoing drought has caused a decline in lake water levels across the Big Country and Concho Valley. Lake Abilene is nearly empty.<\/p>\n

Lake Abilene<\/p>\n

Pictures taken in the morning of October 20, show no water in Lake Abilene. According to Water Data For Texas<\/a>, the lake is 3.6% full and has been for the past month. It hasn’t been this dry since September 30, 2015<\/p>\n

However, this percentage could be inaccurate due to the current government shutdown affecting the U.S Geological Survey<\/a> (USGS).<\/p>\n

Lake Abilene has a storage capacity of 7,900 acre-feet which is equivalent to 2.57 billion gallons. The last time it was at full capacity was July 16, 2021 and has been steadily declining ever since. Major fluxes are not uncommon for this lake.<\/p>\n

The lake was used as a water source for a short period after it was built but has mainly been used for recreation purposes.<\/p>\n

Surrounding Lakes<\/p>\n

Among Lake Abilene, many of our surrounding lakes are declining and several support our water supply.<\/p>\n

Abilene pulls from Lake O.H Ivie, Hubbard Creek and mainly Lake Fort Phantom. In a time of need, the city can pull from Possum Kingdom Lake and Clear Fork of the Brazos. <\/p>\n

Drought<\/p>\n

Abnormally dry to moderate drought conditions have increases across much of the area. <\/p>\n

Drought conditions are expected to increase as signs point towards La Nina conditions<\/a> into winter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ongoing drought has caused a decline in lake water levels across the Big Country and Concho Valley. Lake…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[132970,132971,15229,192,58630,132969,79,39099,50629,45397],"class_list":{"0":"post-241600","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-big-country","9":"tag-concho-valley","10":"tag-drought","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-la-nina","13":"tag-lake-abilene","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-usgs","16":"tag-water-levels","17":"tag-water-supply"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}