The Beaver Lake mystery!

Note that I left the first '6' off the dept chart due to laziness.

Starting on about the second of April, the water level of Bull Shoals began to noticeably rise. As a matter of fact, it rose 2.39 feet in just three days and then continued a slower rate of increase from there on forward to the day of this post. My question was where did all this water come from when there had been relatively little in the form of precipitation? Actually monthly rainfall amounts all across SW MO and NW AR were on the 'lighter side' of normal by my measurements...

Well, it didn't take long for me to trace where all that water came from. This chart of water levels from Beaver Lake show an astounding 8 foot rise in just under a 30 day period in March. This occurring in an area that the NOAA has designated 'abnormally dry'. That spike in the lake level was then passed on to the rest of the waterway system; from Beaver to Table Rock to Taneycomo and finally right to my figurative doorstep on Bull Shoals.

The real question is just where all that 'mystery water' originated. Personal area weather stations, in and around Beaver Lake, all show pretty normal rates of rainfall for the month of March. The rainfall at Holiday Island was measured at just 7.3 inches for the entire year so far! Hmm. This has been such a puzzle to me that I have contacted the Corps of Engineers via email and anxiously await their response.... a week later there was no response. I got just one response, much later on, addressed to Mr. Dan Crackedpot....

Note: For those who might be wondering how much rain it would take falling over the watershed that contains the 44 square mile Beaver Lake (28,000 surface acres), I came up with a very conservative 'guesstimate' of 16 inches needed to raise the water level 8 feet. Of course I could be way off - let's all watch and see what the half inch of rain we got on the 15th does to the water level over the course of the next few days...