Missouri River Continues To Rise; Additional Water Will Be Released At Garrison Dam -- June 18, 2018

This is an update from an earlier post. From The Bixmarck Tribune:

The Missouri River will rise another foot and a half near Bismarck this week as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers again steps up releases from the Garrison Dam, which is cresting 7.25 feet below 2011 flood levels.

Water released will go from 44,000 cubic feet per second to 52,000 cfs over the next three days, reaching the 52,000 cfs rate on Wednesday and continuing at this rate into early July. That is equal to 388,987 gallons per second. The increase is due to continued rapid snowpack melt and rainfall runoff.

Now for some fun.

We've done this before.

Conversion:

• one cubic foot of water = 7.48 gallons
• 50,000 cubic feet of water = 374,000 gallons
• the USACOE will release 374,000 gallons of water every second starting in two days and going into early July -- let's say, maybe a month of an increased rate
• but I digress
• in one second: 374,000 gallons of water
• one minute: 22 million gallons of water (enough water to frack two Bakken wells)
• one hour: sixty times that much or enough water to frack 120 Bakken wells
• one day: 24 x 120 Bakken wells = 2,880 Bakken wells
• the oil industry will probably frack about 1,500 Bakken wells this year

I remember when folks worried whether there would be enough water in North Dakota to frack all those wells. 

Disclaimer: I often make simple arithmetic errors, and I often round numbers.