A number of our water quality monitors have noticed the lagoon water levels have been very low over the last two months. The water levels in the lagoon appear to rise and fall a lot from day to day. Wind is the primary mover of water in the lagoon and short term changes in water levels are often caused by wind driven waves piling up water in the direction it is blowing. Long term water level changes are a different story. The map on this page shows how much the lagoon’s water level dropped from August 2001 to January 2002. By comparing the monthly average of water depth measured by monitors in August with the same location’s average in January we can see that the average drop was about 0.7 feet or nine inches. Spread over the surface area of the lagoon that comes to over four billion gallons of water. This drop in water levels is normal for this time of year since the low rainfall in the winter months do not add runoff to the lagoon. Near the inlets, the water level in the lagoon is influenced by the daily rising and falling of the tide as well as by the seasonal high tides. Lagoon water levels dropped the least (0.2 feet) to the south, near the large inlets. Near a large inlet the lagoon levels tend to more closely match ocean levels so the small drop in water levels should reflect seasonally lower tides. Data from our monitors over the past ten years, show that the lagoon levels are highest in the fall months when seasonal high tides push extra water in from the inlets and lagoon levels are further swelled by heavy rains associated with hurricanes. Heavy rains result in more rainfall landing directly in the lagoon, more rain running off from urban areas, and can also result in large scale water releases from canals such as C54 and C44 which transport water from rainfall that fell in the center of the state into the already swollen lagoon.