Medina Lake at 5 percent capacity

1 heavy rain event over the right spot could bring it back

MICO, Texas – Medina Lake can hold more than a quarter of a million acre feet of water. By Friday, was holding less than 13,000 acre feet -- about 5 percent of its total capacity.

The lake can still be accessed for recreation, but because the lake bed is so steep, it can mean a treacherous hike to the shoreline.

"That's the way it is for everybody. If they are going to be on the lake, they've got a 90-foot hike up to their house," said Mike Crandall, who operates Wally's Water Sports.

Crandall said he can still get people in the lake to kayak and to water ski, but the drought is hurting businesses all around the lake.

"I'm praying for rain. I'm doing a rain dance every day," Crandall said.

Much of the low lake level can be blamed on bad luck.

In the past six weeks, flooding rains have fallen in and around San Antonio and Eagle Pass, but missed the Medina River watershed in Bandera County.

"If we would have gotten that in our recharge area up near Medina County, we would have come up pretty drastically ... but it missed us," Crandall said.

The lake has been this low numerous times before, and is prone to wild fluctuations.

Heavy rain in the spring of 2007 had the lake bouncing from 35 percent of capacity, to going over the spillway in just a mater of days.

There is a little bit of good news.

The weather pattern is set up in the coming days such that if a storm were to drift into the Gulf of Mexico, it would head in this direction.

The bad news is we don't see anything like that happening anytime in the near future.

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