In Desperate Need of Rain
Your representatives on the Belgrade Lakes Dams Committee wish that we could magically add some water to our ponds, but such lofty goals are still beyond our reach, albeit just slightly! Our ponds and gardens are all in desperate need of rain, not just those intermittent evening showers.
As of this writing (approximately one week before this issue hits the newsstands), Great Pond is now exactly at full pond with upper and lower Long Pond currently at 4.32″ below full. Salmon is finally starting to feel the effects of the drought at 1.8″ below full. FYI, all dam gates are still very much closed! Our friends on Messalonskee are 5.28″ below full, which is still miraculous considering that we’re not sending any water down their way due to the drought, and yet they’re still able to generate the electricity to keep those AC and heat pump systems cool! Congratulations to Essex Hydro, which maintains the Oakland Dam and electricity generation.
Both Great and Long Ponds are losing about ½″ per day at this rate in evaporation, which if you remember, are actually normal evaporation rates. An interesting article by C.E. Grunsky entitled “Evaporation from lakes and reservoirs” going back to September 1931 suggests that the evaporation rate with an ambient outside temperature of 85°F is approximately 3⁄10″ per day. Add that to our camps still using lake water in addition to the slight seepage from our dams and you can understand why there are rocks now that we haven’t seen since last fall’s drawdown!
As of this writing we have only received 0.57″ of precipitation in the past ten days and there is only 1.15″ forecasted for the next ten. If you haven’t already done the math, that doesn’t even come close to our evaporation rates! So, for those of you with boat lifts, you’ll want to keep an eye on things to make sure that you can still get your boat off. And don’t forget to remove the boat lift canopy while you can still access it from your boat. You might want to also step up those rain dances — again! Thank you for the help!
Enjoy the family, your vacation, and this beautiful weather!
Dick Greenan is chairman of the Belgrade Lakes Watershed Dams Committee. He submitted this report on July 21, 2026.
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