The official off-limits date for the 2016 GEICO Bassmaster Classic at Grand Lake O’ The Cherokees was set for Jan. 1. Mother Nature decided to end it on Saturday, Dec. 26. That’s when a downpour began that is pushing Grand Lake to historic heights.
“I was out there on Saturday when the storm hit,” said Classic qualifier Jason Christie, who lives in nearby Tahlequah, Okla. “It caught me off-guard. It was one of the worst lightning storms I’ve ever been in.”
By Monday, when it finally stopped raining, Christie said local rainfall totals at Tahlequah had topped 13 inches over the weekend. Several other towns in the Grand Lake watershed had double-digit rainfall totals over Saturday and Sunday.
Pensacola Dam, which impounds Grand Lake, was completed in 1940. It features multiple spillways and six hydropower units.
“They’ve got all the spillways open now,” said Classic qualifier Edwin Evers, when reached by phone Monday afternoon. “That’s only happened twice before, supposedly, once in the ‘70s and the other time was in the ‘50s. They’re talking about Grand going over the top of the dam. They’ve already evacuated people living below the dam.”
Statistics from the Grand Lake Dam Authority demonstrate just how fast conditions changed on the lake:
-
on Saturday, 12/26, at 10 a.m., inflow from Grand Lake tributaries was 3,043 cubic feet per second (cfs), water released from the dam was 19,635 cfs and the lake level stood at 742.67 feet above sea level, right at it’s normal pool level of 742.00.
-
on Sunday, 12/27, at 10 p.m., inflow was 281,664 cfs and the lake level was up to 749.95 – a 7-foot rise in 36 hours.
-
on Tuesday, 12/29, at 7 a.m., inflow was 250,198 cfs, all spillways were open for a maximum release of 218,000 cfs and the lake level was up to 754.92 – just under the top of the flood pool, which is 755.00
Both Christie and Evers, who lives nearby in Talala, Okla., had planned to spend some time on Grand Lake this week, before it went officially off-limits. Mother Nature changed their minds.
“There’s not much use in that now,” Evers said.
No one can possibly predict what the lake level will be for the 2016 GEICO Bassmaster Classic, which is set for March 4-6. But Evers did get some high-water experience on Grand Lake on a day in late May during one of his OPTIMA Batteries Wounded In Action Healing Heroes events. The lake came up almost seven feet in the days before he and Mark Broda managed to catch 5 bass weighing 18.64 pounds from 7 a.m. until 2 p.m.
Evers noted that they were fishing in what would normally be the front yards of lake residents. In fact, Evers caught a bass from a flowerpot. But the conditions today make those last May pale in comparison.
“That flowerpot is way under water now,” Evers said Monday.
Christie was taking one of his three daughters, Anna, deer hunting when he answered his cell phone Monday afternoon. He’d just gotten out of his truck to winch a fallen tree out of the road while on the way to one of his deer stands. Christie managed to put a positive spin on all the rain.
“I figure with all this water, there’s only a few places these deer can be,” he said.
As to where the bass will be in March at Grand Lake, that’s anybody’s guess – now more than ever.