Keystone Lake Flooding

[shadows]

If you are jogging and the dam breaks you will possibility do some high speed cross country running.

The weather radar at the weather station showed the 86' storm as a red screen as the tropical storm moved up the Keystone drainage basin.   They seems to have warned the corps of the inflow and the gates should be opened to compensate.   The corps did not respond until they realized that the inflow would breach the dam.  Then the gates were opened and flooded a large area down stream.  

I believe that the Keystone flood pool will hold an 1 1\2 inch rain fall over its complete basin.   They are trying to hold back the water until the two rivers to the East of Tulsa get down the Arkansas and are back in their banks.

It is interesting to note that the flood on the Mingo in 84' that created SWM was predicted as a 20% chance of rain.   Until the others rivers pass their flooding an unpredicted rain storm in the Keystone basin could cause another 86' flooding disaster.  

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by shadows



It is interesting to note that the flood on the Mingo in 84' that created SWM was predicted as a 20% chance of rain.   Until the others rivers pass their flooding an unpredicted rain storm in the Keystone basin could cause another 86' flooding disaster.  

Could happen, but I doubt they will make the same mistake they did in '84. As per a story in the World ten years later, they trusted rather unsophisticated devices relaying inflow of creeks upstream. Rather than immediately sending corpsmen to double check dubious readings from the equipment, they opted to wait till it was almost too late. Their upstream monitoring is better now. One of those cases where technology really is helping. Now its just a case of balancing out the flooded areas.

[cannon_fodder]

Here is my question:

With 50+K cf/s for a couple of months, did we wash out some of those sand bars?  Surely most of the sediment settles out in the backwaters of Keystone and there just isnt that much area to pick up new stuff from Keystone to 21st street.  

Keep scouring, there has to be a rock bottom somewhere!

If nothing else, we cleared out the trash.

[Conan71]

I motored out onto the water Oologah Saturday evening (not enough wind to sail).  It's almost spooky.  Where I'm used to seeing trees as shoreline land marks, those are mostly under water.  Water is now at the top of 20 foot rock walls and into the treetops of campgrounds.

There were only two other boats out that I could see.  I passed a 25-30 ft. log with birds perched on it in the middle of the water, along with several uninhabited ones, and saw all kinds of interesting floating debris.

As I understand, the purpose of Oologah is aside from flood water management, downstream navigation (McClellan-Kerr), drinking water and recreation, it's also supposed to be a repository for upstream silt to keep it out of the navigation channel.