Lake Level Update 8/17/2021

Paul Myers, Lake Level Committee

Good Afternoon, TLA Members,

It is great to be involved with the Turtle Lake Association again as Chairman of the Lake Level Committee. For those of you who are new members of the TLA, Gail and I have been members since 1993. During that time we have both served on the board and I have been on the Lake Level Committee for many years. This is the first of the periodic updates I plan to send out.

My introduction may be longer than the update since this summer has been one of the driest on record in Minnesota and certainly the driest since we have been on the lake. We should average 15.78 inches of rain in a normal summer but this year we are closer to 5 inches, most of that coming in July.

Fortunately, the dam on the Turtle River is intact so there hasn't been any water draining from Turtle Lake since late May, leaving us at a level of 1351.4 in early August.* Our goal is to maintain a lake level between 1351.0 and 1351.8.

I also want to ask if there are any TLA members who have rain gauges and would be willing to send us rainfall amounts. We get several readings now but it would be nice to add more data points.

We will continue to monitor the dam and hope for some rain!

* Corrected 9/7/2021: I reported the lake level at 1351.4 but that was a typo on my part. The actual lake level was 1351.04.