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  • Missouri River Basin spring public meetings announced

    Public Meetings are held each spring and fall across the Missouri River basin. Upper Basin spring public meetings will be held the week of March 25 in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana.

  • Despite early runoff, upper basin runoff forecast below average; Gavins Point releases to increase for navigation flow support

    A warm February led to increased snowmelt and runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, Iowa. February runoff was 1.8 million acre-feet, 161% of average with above average runoff in every reach except Sioux City, which was near average. However, the updated 2024 calendar year runoff forecast for the basin continues to be below average.   

  • Wallisville Lake Project staff clean up abandoned crab traps

    Each year, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Division (TPWD) closes crab fishing with wire mesh crab traps for ten days to give volunteers the opportunity to round up lost and abandoned traps. The closure is traditionally in late February or early March. Unattended traps “ghost fish” and kill blue crabs and other species unnecessarily and can also create a navigation hazard for boaters. According to a press release from TPWD, since the “Crab Trap Roundup” began 22 years ago, volunteers have removed 42,500 derelict traps, saving an estimated 700,000 blue crabs, a valuable natural resource. Each year at the Wallisville Lake Project, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Galveston District (SWG) personnel join the Crab Trap Roundup, while they patrol.

  • USACE Freshwater Harmful Algal Bloom Research and Development Initiative

    Abstract: Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) represent a significant and costly threat to our nation’s economy and natural resources. This report outlines the US Army Corps of Engineers, Engineer Research and Development Center’s (USACE-ERDC’s) approach to deliver scalable technologies for prevention, early detection, and management of HABs to reduce HAB event frequency, severity, and duration.

  • Below average runoff forecast for the upper Missouri River Basin in 2024

    **Last paragraph to note Forecast generation for 2024 is 8.6 billion kWh. It had been incorrectly stated as 2023.** The updated 2024 calendar year runoff forecast for the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, Iowa, continues to be below average. January runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City was 0.4 million acre-feet, 56% of average. Runoff was well-below-average due to much-below-normal temperatures over the whole Missouri River Basin and below-normal precipitation over most of the upper basin.

  • Dry conditions expected to persist for the Missouri River Basin

    For the 2023 calendar year, Missouri River Basin runoff above Sioux City, Iowa totaled 30.4 million acre-feet (MAF), 118% of average. Despite the above average runoff last year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is forecasting below-average runoff into the mainstem reservoir system this year. For 2024, runoff in the Missouri River Basin above Sioux City, Iowa is forecast to be 20.1 MAF, 78% of average.

  • ERDC-PT: A Multidimensional Particle Tracking Model

    Abstract: This report describes the technical engine details of the particle- and species-tracking software ERDC-PT. The development of ERDC-PT leveraged a legacy ERDC tracking model, “PT123,” developed by a civil works basic research project titled “Efficient Resolution of Complex Transport Phenomena Using Eulerian-Lagrangian Techniques” and in part by the System-Wide Water Resources Program. Given hydrodynamic velocities, ERDC-PT can track thousands of massless particles on 2D and 3D unstructured or converted structured meshes through distributed processing. At the time of this report, ERDC-PT supports triangular elements in 2D and tetrahedral elements in 3D. First-, second-, and fourth-order Runge-Kutta time integration methods are included in ERDC-PT to solve the ordinary differential equations describing the motion of particles. An element-by-element tracking algorithm is used for efficient particle tracking over the mesh. ERDC-PT tracks particles along the closed and free surface boundaries by velocity projection and stops tracking when a particle encounters the open boundary. In addition to passive particles, ERDC-PT can transport behavioral species, such as oyster larvae. This report is the first report of the series describing the technical details of the tracking engine. It details the governing equation and numerical approaching associated with ERDC-PT Version 1.0 contents.

  • Gavins Point Dam releases reduced to winter release rate on November 23

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began reducing the Gavins Point releases to the winter release rate on November 23 with the navigation flow support season ending on December 1 at St. Louis, MO. “Releases from Gavins Point Dam were reduced from 35,000 cubic feet per second to 13,000 cfs by mid-December,” said John Remus, chief of the USACE, Missouri River Water Management Division. “We will closely monitor river conditions, and releases will be adjusted to the extent practical to lessen the impacts of river ice formation on stages in the lower river.”

  • Gavins Point Dam releases to be reduced to winter release rate

    Gavins Point Dam releases will be reduced in late November as flow support to navigation ends. Releases are currently 32,000 cubic feet per second. “We will continue to make releases from Gavins Point Dam to provide flow support at an intermediate service level, 1,500 cfs less than full service, through the end of the navigation flow support season,” said John Remus, chief of the USACE, Missouri River Water Management Division.  “The flow support season will end on Dec. 1 at the mouth of the Missouri River.”

  • Reminder for Missouri River Basin fall public meetings

    This is a reminder that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will host its fall public meeting series for the Missouri River Basin November 7-9, 2023. These public meetings are held each spring and fall across the Missouri River Basin and provide an update on current year's runoff and reservoir operations, as well as planned operations for the next year's runoff season.