October 2016 monitoring

Posted by: upperwalnutcreekaustin | October 16, 2016

October 2016 monitoring

Ma Nature needs to check the calendar – it’s mid October and we’ve been hitting 90+ degrees! Today’s high of 94 tied the record high from over 70 years ago. Time to cool down a bit. Hopefully soon. We’ve only had about 1/3 inch of rain since the middle of last month (last monitoring); that does make a difference. Fortunately we had a flood earlier this year so Lake Travis is full, but we need some RAIN!

The stream clearly reflects the dry conditions; it’s very low. Way upstream the “sometime island” rocks in the middle of the stream are dry, and between them and the waterfall the inlet is also completely dry. The waterfall only has a trickle in the middle, and directly above it there are other high and dry spots. There’s a fair amount of underwater and surface algae. As usual after no recent rain, the stream doesn’t look too pretty. There was also some new (to us) trash under the bridge where we set up.

Despite the limited rain, the storm culvert has a good flow. We didn’t see any fish or birds (including pigeons); just a few water walkers. And I didn’t actually see them, just the dimples in the stream.

The hike and bike trail side has a couple of new decorations: downstream the side of the trail has new colors, and just upstream there’s a new… poem? on one of the pillars.

Observations:

Air temp: 26 C
water temp 23 C
dissolved oxygen 4.6
pH 7.0
specific conductance 570
transparency > 1.2 meters
Nitrates .5
ecoli: 515 colonies – higher than recommended for the stream