Now's The Time To Start Watching Lake Champlain Lake Level

Lake Champlain waves crash onto Route 2 in Grand Isle in April, 2011 as
the lake was rising toward a record crest a few weeks later.

The first good thaw and rain of the spring came Thursday and Friday, which meant the first good rush of water into Lake Champlain since February.

This is the time of year when we'll begin to watch the water level of Lake Champlain creep upward.

As of Friday, the start of the melt season, the lake level was more than 3.5 feet below flood stage.

It might or might not get to the flood stage of 100 feet above sea level this spring. It depends on how much rain we get, and how fast the snow melts.

Flood stage on Lake Champlain is not a bad thing at all. The ecosystem of the lake needs its annual rise and fall to maintain itself. The floods help the natural cycle of wildlife. The lake doesn't reach flood stage every year, but even if it gets close, it helps with ecology of the lake.

Us humans, of course, don't like flooding, because we build things that can get wrecked too close to the shore. If the lake barely reaches flood stage - say it rises to between 100 and 100.5 feet above sea level, that really isn't a big deal. Which is good, because spring lake levels of just over 100 feet are pretty damn common.

At that level, some roads very close to the lake get flooded, the park at Perkins Pier in Burlington goes underwater and waves can cause some shoreline erosion around summer camps and such. But such flooding is just a routine part of spring.

Once you start getting water levels above 101 feet, damage starts to occur. The worst, flooding, during the memorable spring of 2011, brought Lake Champlain water levels to a record 103.27 feet. As we remember, there was widespread, very extensive damage around the lake in Vermont, New York and Quebec.

As for this year, it doesn't look like we'll come anywhere close to those levels in 2011, unless there are unprecedented rains, even beyond the record downpours of April and May, 2011.  In other words, no worries.

It's unclear as to whether we'll even make it to the minor flood stage of 100 feet above sea level. It could, because there's still plenty of snow in the mountains and an active jet stream means we have the potential for relatively frequent rains and snows - at least through the first half of April.

On the other hand, if the storms are small and the snow melt is gradual, the lake level won't rise all that much.

As we see the lake level slowly rise in April, take it this way - it's a sign spring is really taking hold. We still might need to wait a little while for full on spring. But on a snowy early April day when you notice the lake is a bit higher than it was a week earlier, you can still have confidence warmer days are ahead.