Here is an interesting flowchart showing how all the TSW lakes are connected.

Note that area lakes Jack, Anstruther, and Eels are all TSW reservoir lakes.

It is true that Chandos Lake flows into the Crowe River, and that the Crowe River eventually enters the Trent River near Campbellford. There is a dam on the Crowe River at Marmora, that primarily controls the level of Crowe Lake. The operation of this dam has negligible effect on Chandos because the difference in elevations is about 130 metres, and between Chandos Lake and Crowe Lake there are many natural areas (wetlands, etc), to store water.

Iain Gorman forwarded me some correspondence he received regarding low lake levels in the region.

It is duplicated below, in Italics,

First though, an explainer….

Continue reading “Low Water Everywhere!!”

Cathy Burgess reports that the official date for Ice out in 2021 is April 9.

The winner of her contest is Brian McKinlay. I understand his prize is some very old ice cubes from the last ice of 2006, which pair very nicely with 15 year old Single Malt Scotch.

A new graph has been posted as per below. It can be seen at chandossier.com along with a bit of commentary.

The following is a post to the CLPOA facebook page….

Following up on Iain’s post of April 2, 2021 where he reports that the flow along Flat Creek is into the lake: –It seems as of April 3, the reverse flow has “reversed” and is back to a normal outflow from the lake. On March 25, the lake level was 1026′ 3″. The first log was pulled out of the Paudash dam on that day, with a log being pulled on March 26 and March 28. The Chandos lake level peaked around April 1 just over 1027′, and as of 3 April it is about 1027′ 0″. In 2020 the peak of 1027′ 6″ occurred about April 6. Unless there are some really crazy rains in the next week or so, we have likely passed our peak water for 2021.

Continue reading “Flat Creek returns to normal flow out of Chandos April 3, 2021”

From March 25 to March 30 Chandos has risen 7″. As reported earlier, water is flowing in from Flat Creek. It is still in reverse mode today, although it was a bit hard to tell as the wind was going straight north, thereby opposing the flow coming south, which created surface wavelets that appeared to be going in the direction of the wind. However, the flowmeter indicated about 0.5 m/sec flow into Chandos.

I confirmed with the CVCA that they had pulled logs from the dam on three days -the 25th, 26th, and the 28th. They believe Paudash has now peaked and they don’t expect to remove any more logs, unless there is a lot of rain.

Just north of Glen Alda on the Crowe River, Environment Canada operates a Water monitoring Station 02HK005. The results are available in real time on line. Here is a typical graph for the last 15 days:

(see https://wateroffice.ec.gc.ca/report/real_time_e.html?stn=02HK005&mode=Graph&startDate=2021-03-15&endDate=2021-03-29&prm1=46&y1Max=&y1Min=&prm2=47&y2Max=&y2Min=)

It is obvious that the flow and level have significantly increased in the last couple of days. The question, which I will attempt to determine, is “has the CVCA taken logs out of the dam at Paudash, or is this totally due to rain and spring melt? ” (suspect both).

The CVCA operate a gauge at the culverts, but I am always wary of the data. The principle of the gauge is to estimate mass flow from the level. However, in a creek that reverses, this type of gauge is inadequate.

Hi all,

Iain Gorman reports that the water flow at the culverts has now reversed, thus there is a net flow into Chandos, which will make the level of the lake start to rise.

This means that the level of the Crowe River at the confluence with Flat Creek is higher than the level of Chandos. I’ll be taking some measurements tomorrow.

Geoff

I have started to monitor the flows and levels in our area.

It seems that the melt is occurring later than last year. As of March 25, 2021 the water flow (cubic metres/sec) at the Environment Canada Glen Alda Station is about 8 m3/s, whereas last year about this time it was twice that. This gauge, on the Crowe River, measures the combined mass flow out of Chandos and Paudash.

The ice came out early last year, (April 11) about 8 days ahead of the long term average. This year we have had a lot of rain and some warm weather which no doubt will speed up Ice-Out,

The big question always is what will the spring peak water level be. There are a lot of moving parts, but in general, the more ice/snow that can vacate the water shed early, the longer the freshet will last, and so the lower the ultimate peak level will be.

The CLPOA is a member of the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations

Here is a link to their recently published Strategic Plan..

Every Year Cathy Burgess runs an Ice-Out prediction contest for some kind of prize. I don’t know what it is, or if it’s worth the effort, because I’ve never won. However, if you have a ouija board or a 6th sense foretelling capability, or just want to join the fun, you might want to enter.

Entries must be in by 13 March. You can email her at cathyaburgess@gmail.com for details.