More Than Enough Fracking Water In North Dakota; Lake Sakakawea Update; Five Feet High And Rising: Rising More Than Anticipated; Montana Snow Melt

Five feet high and rising -- I can't make this stuff up.

Regular readers know that there is more than enough fresh water for fracking in North Dakota. For background, there is a "FrackingWater" tag at the bottom of the blog.

For newbies, this is always kind of fun:

So, how much water is being released from the Garrison Dam today? Dynamic link here.

The answer: 20,000 cubic feet/second.

A cubic foot of water: 7 gallons.

So, in one second: 140,000 gallons of water released from the Garrison Dam today
In one minute: 8 million gallons of water released from the Garrison Dam today
In one hour: 500 million gallons of water released from the Garrison Dam today

Less then 4 million gallons of water are used to frack a well, but let's keep it simple:
500 million gallons / 5 million gallons = 100 wells

If I did the arithmetic correctly, enough water is released from the Garrison Dam each hour to frack 100 wells.

2,000 wells will be fracked this year. Less than a day's worth of discharge from the Garrison Dam should be enough water to frack all the wells that will be fracked in the North Dakota Bakken this year.

That was posted May 25, 2013.

So, how's the lake doing mid-summer, 2013? Rising. And you know what video that means. Yes, the linked article below really did say "five feet high and rising."

Five Feet High And Rising, Johnny Cash

The Minot Daily News is reporting:

The water level of Lake Sakakawea continues to trend above earlier projections, good news for lake interests.

The Aug. 1 runoff projections issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers show an end-of-month elevation of 1,834.7 feet for Lake Sakakawea. That compares to a level of 1,833.0 feet projected one month earlier.

According to the Corps, total runoff into the Missouri River system for 2013 is now projected to reach 22.7 million acre feet. As late as May 1, the Corps was anticipating only 20.0 maf of runoff. The increase in runoff has led to lake levels becoming higher than what was expected early in the recreation season.

For example, the May 1 outlook projected Lake Sakakawea to dip to 1,830.0 feet by the end of August. The most recent projection calls for nearly a five foot increase over what was expected in early May.

So, lots of boating, lots of fishing, lots of fracking.