It's no secret that South Dakota is in a serious drought this year. But, how does what's happening now compare to droughts from the past?
"Right now we're approximately 7 feet from full," says Pactola Pines Marina Owner, David Fisher.
In 2008, water levels in Pactola were more than 40 feet from full.
"We're nowhere near that yet and hopefully we won't see that," says Fisher.
"We're in a good situation yet," says Kirk Anderson, with the Bureau of Reclamation.
He says that's because we've had several years of heavy moisture.
"And now as we move into a drier period obviously the inflows are starting to drop off," says Anderson.
Right now, water is flowing in at half the rate it normally does.
In 2005, that rate was even less, at that time water was trickling into Pactola at 1/4 of the normal rate.
But, according to the latest drought monitor release, it may not be long until we're in the same position.
That's because, more than 82% of South Dakota is in a drought.
And, more than 59 percent of the state is categorized as severe and about 18% as extreme.
The biggest difference between the current drought and the last drought: we went from no drought in early June, to where we are now in just a couple of months.
The last drought took multiple dry years to reach the same level.
"I don't think the drop this year has been anywhere near what we saw in those years but what happens next year is going to be key," says Fisher.
But for now, "We're down about 7 feet from full which isn't too far out of the norm," says Fisher.
Just how much moisture we receive this winter and early spring will determine the water levels in Pactola next year.
Fisher says they already know they made it through this season, which began when Pactola was full.
Now they have to wait and see how next season will start off. Keep in mind that Pactola is where Rapid City gets it's water from, when levels reach a certain point water restrictions will take place.
Fisher says he is extremely happy with the way the local governments are already regulating water use.
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On a side note: the capacity of Pactola Reservoir is 55,000 acre feet of water. Which is the volume of one acre with a foot of water on it. If you include the end zones in a football field, an acre is 75% of that field.
That's equal to 41,250 football fields with 1ft of water on them!
In other terms, 1 acre foot is about 325,851 gallons of water. Which means Pactola can hold 17,921,805,000 gallons of water. Again that's nearly 18 billion gallons of water at full capacity.
The average amount of water flowing into Pactola is 17,000 acre feet. Currently about 7,000 acre feet are flowing into it between May and July. That's about 40% of average.
At one point during the 2006 drought, inflow into Pactola was down to 600-700 acre feet of water, leading to the low levels saw early in 2008.
