West Palm Beach taps its emergency groundwater wells as drought continues into rainy season
While May finished with nearly normal rainfall totals, the deficit in West Palm Beach this year is nearly 13 inches below average as measured at Palm Beach International Airport. Since the rainy season began May 15, the rain deficit is 5.1 inches.
National Weather Service meteorologists said a westward stretching Bermuda High, which has bullied afternoon sea breeze showers farther inland, combined with a sprinkling of cloud vaporizing Saharan dust has contributed to making this year the fifth-driest and ninth-warmest in 130 years of records.
"We've just been dry overall and when we don't get the showers and thunderstorms, with the angle of the sun being really high, it allows everything to heat up," said Miami-based NWS meteorologist Barry Baxter.
In West Palm Beach, where the water supply is primarily drawn from lakes and wetlands, the city started pulling water from its emergency groundwater wellfields on April 17 to supplement the supply for the estimated 130,000 residents of West Palm, Palm Beach and South Palm Beach.
Clear Lake, which feeds directly into the city's water treatment plant, has developed a crusty sloping beach around its edges as water recedes. City officials said on June 17 the lake was at 10.55 feet above sea level, which is within the normal seasonal range of 9.5 feet to 12.5 feet above sea level.
Still, city officials said they are concerned about whether there is enough water in the regional system, which includes water from Lake Okeechobee, to supplement supply until the rainy season steps up its game.
"What if we don't get the rain we need?" asked Ryan Rossi, executive director of the South Florida Water Coalition, during a June 5 South Florida Water Management District meeting. "It's not an unusual question to keep asking, it's not unusual for the people of West Palm Beach to ask, and I think they should be asking it."
Rainy season officially runs May 15 through Oct. 15 in South Florida. Those dates were set by the NWS Miami office in 2018 as a way to increase awareness of what can be a dangerous time of year with frequent lightning, flooding, occasional tornadoes and severe thunderstorms.
Previous to having the permanent dates, the rainy season's start date was determined by looking at atmospheric conditions including dew point temperatures, sea surface temperatures and an established pattern of rainfall typical to the rainy season.
Between 60% and 70% of the average annual rainfall in South Florida occurs during the wet season.
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John Mitnik, chief engineer for the South Florida Water Management District, said at the June 5 meeting that district meteorologists believe the rainy season began May 22 this year.
Ahead of that, there were six consecutive months of below-normal rainfall over the 16-county region that the district manages from Orlando to the Keys.
'The wet season has started,' Mitnik said June 5. 'Welcome to the wet season.'
And it seemed to be the case. In the two weeks following May 22, areas of Miami-Dade County received 5.3 inches of rain, the Florida Keys averaged 3.9 inches, parts of Broward County were at 3.4 inches and coastal Palm Beach County had 2.6 inches.
Then the rainfall sputtered.
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The largest Saharan dust outbreak for May in eight years occurred during the last week of the month, according to Michael Lowry, a hurricane expert with South Florida ABC-TV affiliate WPLG-Channel 10.
Lowry said a stronger-than-normal Bermuda High could be helping to usher the dust outbreaks toward the Caribbean and Florida. Saharan dust prevents widespread showers from forming by adding a layer of warm dry air to the upper atmosphere that prevents clouds from growing.
The U.S. Drought Monitor will release an updated report June 19, but as of June 10, about 75% of Palm Beach County was in moderate or severe drought.
Statewide, the panhandle remains drought-free, but the majority of the peninsula is suffering from abnormally dry conditions to pockets of extreme drought in Lee County and Palm Beach County.
'It appears that the start of the wet season is on the drier side of normal, but more importantly the extended dry conditions that preceded it has kept us in a very dry position regionally,' said Tommy Strowd, the Lake Worth Drainage District's executive director. 'While drought conditions have eased somewhat in response to recent rainfall, they still generally persist across the Florida peninsula, particularly South Florida.'
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Strowd said groundwater levels and water levels in canals are generally in good shape because of the amount of Lake Okeechobee water that was released this year.
The district was able to capture that water in its system of canals instead of it being sent to the ocean through the Lake Worth Lagoon, which damages the brackish ecosystem.
The releases were part of the new Lake Okeechobee System Operating Manual, which manages when and how much water should be let out of the lake for water supply, the well-being of the St. Lucie and Caloosahatchee estuaries and the health of the lake itself.
On June 18, Lake Okeechobee was 11.18 feet above sea level. That's down from 15.12 feet on Jan. 1 and a level that is allowing nascent recovery of some aquatic plants. The plants are the building block of the lake's ecosystem but die when water levels get too high and block sunlight.
"The lake was in horrible shape," said United Water Fowlers Florida President Newton Cook at the June 5 meeting. "What is happening today will help bring it back and get the lake back to doing what it is supposed to do, and that is being the heart of the Everglades."
Kimberly Miller is a journalist for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA Today Network of Florida. She covers real estate, weather, and the environment. Subscribe to The Dirt for a weekly real estate roundup. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. Help support our local journalism, subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Drought continues into South Florida's wet season but rain uptick expected
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