Drought lingers in region even as Waco returns to normal

But just beyond the county borders to the west and south, a two-year drought has proven stubbornly persistent.

Waco Regional Airport recorded 2.77 inches of rain this past week, bringing the January total to 4.4 inches.

Most of McLennan County last week moved out of the “abnormally dry” category on the U.S. Drought Monitor, which had showed significant drought here through most of 2022 and 2023.

Lake Waco, which fell a record 15 feet before a dramatic turnaround in late October, sat nearly 1.5 feet above its normal level of 462 feet above sea level on Friday. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was limiting releases from Waco and Lake Whitney, which was also nearly one foot over normal, to stem flooding far down the Brazos near Richmond, Corps district spokesperson Clay Church said.

But the blessings of rainfall over the last few months have not been equally distributed across Central Texas.

Most of Bell County remains in “moderate” drought despite January rainfall that totaled 3.8 inches at Fort Cavazos, mostly this past week. Belton Lake is 14.4 feet below normal, while nearby Stillhouse Hollow Lake is more than 17 feet down.

Coryell County this month is about half in moderate drought and half in abnormally dry status, a break from an unrelenting two-year period in which the entire county has mostly been in extreme or exceptional drought. Unofficial National Weather Service records show Gatesville’s airport received 2.7 inches this month, mostly in the past week.

“It seems like everyone around us has been getting rain but it’s been missing us,” Coryell County AgriLife Extension Agent Robert Ferguson said of the recent weather.

“When you talk to people around the county, some people got two or three inches, some a tenth of an inch. There hasn’t been a widespread rainfall event in the last year.”

Coryell County’s rugged landscape mostly supports hay and cattle grazing, Ferguson said. Hay has been marginal for the last two years, and ranchers are struggling. Some have thinned their herds. Some have run out of water and had to truck it in.

He said recent rains have at least greened up some pastures and saturated the soil enough that a significant rain would produce some runoff.

“I would say we need a good 5- to 6-inch widespread rain,” he said. “It needs to come in two ways: slow and steady to saturate the ground, and then a heavy rain” to fill rivers and lakes.

Bell and Coryell counties are in the watershed of the Little River, which flows into the Brazos after receiving flows from the Lampasas, Leon and San Gabriel rivers.

The Little River watershed is home to Georgetown, Stillhouse, Belton and Proctor lakes, all of which have suffered low water levels as other parts of the Brazos River basin have recovered from drought, said Aaron Abel, water services manager for the Brazos River Authority.

“What we’ve seen is that Little River system has been historically low compared to other periods,” Abel said.

The Waco-based authority oversees surface water flows in the entire Brazos River basin and sells wholesale water out of 11 reservoirs, including Georgetown, Stillhouse, Belton and Proctor.

Abel said the Little River watershed has benefited from rains in recent weeks, and Belton Lake rose by about a foot. But much of the rainfall has been absorbed or run into agricultural ponds. Now the stage is set for more runoff if more rain comes, he said.

“We saw this with Lake Waco last summer,” Abel said. “The ground was too dry to generate substantial stream flows. It’s a process where you have to wet the soils.”

In August, the Brazos River Authority declared Stage 2 drought restrictions for its wholesale customers purchasing water from Belton Lake and Stillhouse Hollow Lake. Those restrictions remain in effect for now even though Belton Lake has risen above the threshold that triggered the restrictions.

Customers of Belton Lake include Bluebonnet Water Supply Corp., which provides water to the city of McGregor.

Meanwhile, Proctor Lake, which is upstream on the Leon River from Belton Lake, is at 26% capacity and at emergency Stage 4 drought restrictions, meaning its customers must cut use by 30%. Abel said that lake, which serves small water customers and irrigators around rural Comanche County, has seen low levels repeatedly over the last two decades.

Abel said he sees reason to remain hopeful about the drought-stricken lakes. Overall, the Brazos River Authority’s reservoirs are 81% full, and he is looking forward to the April-to-June season, when most of this region’s rain typically falls.

This year’s El Niño weather pattern favors normal to above-normal rainfall in the region, he said.

In the meantime, Belton Lake is not close to running out of water, he said.

At the current level of 579.6 feet above sea level, the lake is about 59% full. It still has 276,205 acre-feet of drinking water storage, more than twice the amount Lake Waco has when full, according to the Texas Water Development Board’s waterdatafortexas.org.

With Lake Possum Kingdom, Lake Granbury and Lake Whitney close to full or overfull, the Brazos River Authority has plenty of water to serve its giant customers far down the Brazos River, such as Dow Chemical Co. and BASF, Abel said.

Arthur Johnson, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers park ranger at Belton Lake for the last 17 years, said this is the lake’s lowest level since it was expanded in 1972.

But he said the lake is unusually deep for this area, allowing marinas to stay open and boat recreation to continue. The rise this week allowed the Corps to reopen three boat ramps closed because of low water levels, he said.

“It’s steadily coming back up,” Johnson said. “It has always come back, and we’re optimistic it will again.”

Kiley Moran, a McGregor-based spokesperson for the Texas A&M Forest Service, said the recent rains have lowered wildfire risks in Coryell and Bell counties, even in areas noted as being in drought.

The forest service worked with fire departments across the state to extinguish a series of large wildfires in the first half of 2022.

Last year’s fire season was less burdensome, due to less fuel on the ground and better prevention efforts, Moran said.

“The public has become more aware of the problem and more receptive to cleaning up around their homes and making sure they have water sources nearby,” he said. “Since 2022, we’ve been trying to hammer into people to be ready for wildfire, and that has helped a lot.”

The National Weather Service forecasts for Waco, Gatesville and Killeen call for mostly clear skies in the coming week. The Waco forecast calls for a Sunday night low of 38 and a Monday high of 66, with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s for the rest of the week.