Pond Boss Forums GENERAL QUESTIONS Pond Boss Still need rain

We had 16 days in May with at least . 01 inches of rain but only two days with one inch or more (barely). Enough piddly rains, heavy dews, and fogs to delay the hay season by three weeks already. Much of the uncut hay is ruined. But, we are seriously needing some runoff in NW Arkansas. Many ponds are still low going into the summer season. The drought monitor shows a spot of abnormally dry here. It seems wet, but in reality, the soil moisture is low.

John,
It's the same in Northeast Missouri. We are way behind average rainfall numbers.
We did get 3" in May, but that's below average, and prior to that we had 1" for the first four months of the year. Combine that with a slow leak, I'm curious when my pond gets dangerously low, and I'll see fish dying. I still have 10' of depth, but it's still dropping.
The good news is, I'm narrowing the search for the leak..

John, I hope u get some much needed rain @ your place. I thought the lakes up there were full. I have a place on the White River and Bull Shoals lake along with other lakes in the area were high on my last visit, thought you guys up in N Ark and S. Missouri were good to go ?

Tracy

It's just this one little area that is low on runoff, about 20 x 30 miles. The rest of the area had rains. We were bypassed many times by the heavy stuff and only had drizzle. One place about 15 miles south of here had a historic flash flood last week, but we only got sprinkles.

I guess I can narrow the search for my leak too, or not have a viable pond. I plan to net as many of the albino catfish out as possible if it starts to go dry, and take them to a neighbor's larger pond that does not leak. We got another 1/10 inch rain last night in about a 10 hour period.

John F, we had some tremendous rains here in Goshen last week. I hope you got some of the action.

Some of it, but not much. Got 1.2 inches yesterday morning.

Weatherman last night said in the past 21 days we only have had 5% of the normal rain that falls during that period. I had 1/4" yesterday, 12 miles South of me had 3/4". We are still about 1" above normal for the year, but the rain that we had a month ago pushed us up over normal.

We are barely getting enough to keep the grass from getting crispy. Farmers have started irrigating with the center pivots, my pond is dropping about 1" per day.

Do you think you have a leak?

I know I do. The pond water level will fluctuate up to 60" from a wet spring to a dry fall. It's a water table pond...... All sand.

Update:
We got 2.35" of rain Friday night. Pond raised a few inches, creek started running again. After creek cleared, I was able to pump the pond back to very near normal pool again. Had to stop because creek flow is again becoming insufficient. But, I have enough water for now. Total pond rise of 14 inches, still seven inches below spillway.

Good news. Glad you got back to close to full pool. I got about 1' back with the recent rains, but,still have 3+ feet to go.
I'm just hoping we can get back to normal rainfall amounts here.