Chocolate milk ocean???

[Douglas]

I'm worried about it.

 

[Jdarg]

Thank you. When the rest of the Gulf along 30-A clears up, does the "beer colored" water linger in the Gulf within, say, 100 yards of where the breakout had been?

Really?? Frank Brown Park in Panama City Beach has a really nice pool. It stays the same 365 days a year, crystal clear.

 

[Teresa]

I'm worried about it.

No need. Our kids have grown up in these lakes having a blast. When the lake breaks open the kids get to go white water rafting on their boogie boards. Folks swim, kayak and paddle board in the lakes. They are a real treasure. Not to mention rare coastal lakes.

 

[Douglas]

I'm NOT worried about the water quality or safety for swimming. I like the dune lakes! But the appearance of the Gulf water adjacent to Eastern Lake matters to me, and if anyone can answer my specific questions, I'd appreciate it.

 

[NotDeadYet]

I'm NOT worried about the water quality or safety for swimming. I like the dune lakes! But the appearance of the Gulf water adjacent to Eastern Lake matters to me, and if anyone can answer my specific questions, I'd appreciate it.

It's good you are not worried about the water quality, because it is just tannin from the lake water. And I understand how you feel, I think, because even though I know it is a natural process, and I have a lot of appreciation for the dune lakes and their natural processes, I do even so really dislike the look of it. But the thing is, nobody can really tell you more than what has been said already, because it is never the same. It just depends on the amount of rain we get whether the dune lakes open up and whether they stay open a short time or a bit longer. It's like the weather. We had a really warm winter and a cool and very wet summer. When will we have that again? Nobody knows. I will say though I have not seen it stay brown for weeks at a time. Unless the lake opens, closes right away, then we get a few days of deluges and it opens up again. See, that is how it is. Might be clear all summer long or brown off and on all summer long, or clear for all but a few days in any given summer.

 

[lenzoe]

Like NDY says, it depends. For a real answer someone would really need to have a daily monitoring record. I haven't heard yet of anyone that does, but its certainly possible.

We have a place just east of Eastern Lake a couple of hundred yards. We rent it out and normally only get there four or five times a year in the off season. In the 10 years we've owned it, I only remember EL actually breaking out while we were there twice. Some of those times we visited it has been open for a while and it had an inflow at high tide and an outflow at low tide, most of those times it's been closed off completely. We consider being there when they break open especially lucky times as its been so rare for us and we like it.

When it breaks through, whether you get colored water in front of you depends on the nearshore current at the time. Some times it flows west to east, some times east to west. I think the prevailing current is east to west, but we've been there when it was open and either only the area right in front of the outlet was brown or it was flowing east from us.

I wonder about lake openings and closings mainly because I'm curious. If I were more curious I'd start a web site or maybe a topic on Sowal forums and solicit folks to send sightings of openings and dates so I could track it.

If you run across anyone that can give you more specific information, please post as I'd be interested in hearing about it.

 

[Lake View Too]

I live on Eastern Lake, and have observed Eastern Lake Inlet pretty much my whole life. It it a truly fascinating and ever-changing experience. It's somewhat like the weather, but in a much slower mode. I've seen it run way past Commodore's Retreat to the west, and I've seen it completely disappear after Dennis in '05. After Ivan in '04 it snaked way back east. If you were good at SoWal search, you might can gather postings of the breakouts, because someone usually mentions it. But for me, gathering too much scientific data on it might just spoil the mystique of this wonderful event. My two cents.

 

[Lake View Too]

To some of the posters on this thread who were alarmed about the "coffee-colored" lake water, I must amend my statements about the water being "beer-colored". As of late, the water does seem almost "coffee-colored" (or maybe a dark porter or stout.) I've been around a long time and this is about as dark as I have ever seen it. I can only surmise that the incredible rainfall this last month or two contributed to the production of the tannin in the trees, and it is making its way to the coastal dune lakes and then out to sea. Mother Nature will bring things back into balance, probably without the help of the SoWal forum's attempts to understand her.

 

[Jdarg]

The water everywhere here is so high- and the water table is not very deep, so after a month of rain, nothing is draining fast! The lakes are backed way up into swamps and creeks, and all that organic matter is now coming out with the draining water.

We had a fine time swimming in the "coffee water" of the Western Lake outfall at Grayton today. A lifeguard posted red "no swim" flags at several rip current locations at Grayton, but that didn't stop several jackass dads from swimming with their toddler age children. Hard to relax when you see that!

 

[Teresa]

yes, we enjoyed Grayton Beach (lake swimming only) yesterday morning for a few hours. There was a red flag, but a no swimming red flag on the beach near the water - I had not seen that before. Anyway, the lake and gulf were very dark, churning, beautiful. We had to keep the kids away from the outflow area where the lake empties into the Gulf - it was just a little scary.

Almost no one was out while we were there because of rain that was happening everywhere BUT out on Grayton Beach. Nice to have it to ourselves.

The looks of the water and weather and clouds yesterday was just mystical, beautiful, strange and yes - dark chocolatey!