(Orleans)– All of the recent rainfall is also having a direct impact on lake levels. Mike Hawkins, a fisheries biologist with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources tells KUOO news levels on the Iowa Great Lakes have risen considerably recently…
“We’re just maybe an inch or so from going over the spillway on Big Spirit Lake. So Big Spirit Lake is nearly full. And for a few weeks here we’ve had some water going out on the Okoboji’s over the dam there. I looked here this morning and we were around four to six inches above crest elevation of the dam on the Okoboji chain, so yeah, definitely water levels have come up from where they were last fall. We got awfully low last fall.”
And with more rain in the forecast, Hawkins says those levels are likely to come up even more.