Ample precipitation brought the lake level up from the record low in October to our target level this month. The last time the Glen Lakes were in the low range we saw in October was in 2012.
The pink area in the graph below is the target zone in which we try to maintain the lake level, and the dashed line in the middle is the actual target.
Things to note:
- The downward sloping of the target zone on the left runs through the end of October. Starting August 16, the target zone, as established by the 2002 court case, was slowly lowered a hundredth of an inch every few days. This was done both due to typically high precipitation with low evaporation in the cooler months and to reduce the possibility of shoreline erosion.
- The dam gates have been adjusted five times in the time period shown in the chart below. In October, though the lakes were very low, a change had to be made to maintain the Crystal River flow at its court-ordered bare minimum of 23CFS (cubic feet per second).
- On October 30, we received over 3” of rain in one day, enabling us to raise the dam gates and hold more water in the lake.
- By December 12, we had exceeded our lake level target, so we lowered the dam gates. They were lowered again on January 3, and the lake level remains at target for this time of year.
- On March 16, 2025, we will start to ramp up to the target summer level of 596.88’ true elevation above sea level.

The Glen Lake Association started automatically logging this water level data to a server once the current sensor system was installed at the end of 2010. You can see the lake level fluctuations in the graph below, which shows 2010-2024. Note the low lake levels in 2011, 2012, and 2024.

To see full-sized versions of these graphs, read this article in the Watershed News section of our website.