More vanishing lake

This gives a better idea of how low Lake Travis is these days. This ditch (about half a mile south of the previous photo) was a tributary off Cypress Arm before the drought and those sheltered swim platforms at the bottom used to float near the shore. The whole lake-reservoir, of course, used to look like this (albeit without any water) before Mansfield Dam was erected in the early 1940s stoppering the Colorado River–the Texas Colorado, not the more famous one–to create the lake. We have had a bit more than 1.5 inches of rain at the Rancho in the past 24 hours, the best rainfall in several months. But it will take a lot more in the lake’s watershed (principally the Llano and Pedernales rivers) to bring the lake back up to normal.