BELL COUNTY, Texas — Central Texas, like much of the state, has been in a severe drought situation for months.
This past weekend may have felt like a miracle for Texans as rain finally fell from the sky.
”In the areas off to the rest, we saw some six to seven inch rainfall totals,” said 25 News Meteorologist, Josh johns.
“As estimated by radar across Bosque and parts of Mills County, this fell exactly where it needed to, to help our area lakes.”
Johns says Bell County wasn’t left out of the fun.
”In the case of Bell County though, a lot of this fell further in the Stillhouse Hollow reservoir and watershed,” Johns said.
“Which goes back here from Goldthwaite, down through Lampasas, and into southern Bell County.”
Thanks to the rain over the weekend, the section of the Lampasas River that flows underneath of HWY 195 is finally moving again, and it’s already pushed more water into Stillhouse lake, than WCID 1in Killeen has treated and delivered all year, but it hasn’t made a dent in the lake levels.
”We haven’t seen a lot of movement at those gauges really since the middle of June,” said General Manager of WCID #1, Ricky Garrett.
“We need a lot more rain — we're still in the midst of a very serious drought, but it was a good step in the right direction.”
It just wasn’t a big enough step to affect water restrictions.
”It won't be for some time,” Garrett said.
“We would need a lot more rains like this to move the gauge enough on the lakes to ease the water restrictions.”
Though this past rain did help, the nest rain chances may not come as soon as many Texans would like.
”Again, every little bit helps and at the very least, maybe it will offset some of the evaporation that we’ve been seeing here as of late,” Johns said.
“Unfortunately, it looks like rain chances are not going to tick up much over the next week. We may have a few rain chances trying to work in as we get into next week but the majority of this week looks dry."
The good news is, Central Texas finally got some rain, but it didn’t make much of an impact.
Those water restrictions are still in place and people need to continue conserving water until those little steps add up to a big one.
