How Much Evaporation from Deep Creek Lake?

The question has come up a number of time: “How much evaporation is there from the lake?”

There is no specific data for Deep Creek Lake, but there is data for the nearby Savage River Reservoir. This reservoir is only a few miles from Deep Creek Lake, and although lower in elevation, the climate there is not too unlike that of the lake. Hence evaporation data from the reservoir’s water surface are expected to be not too far from those at the lake. It’s the best guess we have available. This note summarizes some of that data.

From: Table 1, p.34 of NOAA Technical Report NWS 34 Mean Monthly, Seasonal, and Annual Pan Evaporation for the United States Washington, D.C. December 1982,

The mean monthly Class A Pan evaporation, in inches, is:

Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct
5. 5.42 5.8 5.98 5.36 4.17 2.72

The coefficient of variation (standard deviation/mean) for these means are:

Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct
*** 9 6 10 3 18 11

This data represents average values from 11 to 37 years of record.  The summarized data was extracted from measurements made during 1956-1970.   The sum of these numbers is 34.46 inches.

The seasonal (May-Oct) average is 29.46 inches .

Deep Creek Lake and Savage River Reservoir are very likely to be similar in their evaporation characteristics.

Assuming that they are similar, the actual lake evaporation is roughly 0.70 to 0.75 times the pan evaporation.

Thus, Deep Creek Lake can expect to loose about 0.75 x 34.46 = 25.8 inches of water via evaporation, or about 2.2 ft per year.

Casting these numbers in inches/day gives:

The mean daily evaporation form the lake, in inches/day, is:

Apr May June July Aug Sept Oct
0.09 0.13 0.15 0.15 0.13 0.1 0.066

Literature

  1. ESTIMATING EVAPORATION FROM WATER SURFACES, presentation
  2. ESTIMATING EVAPORATION FROM WATER SURFACES, Marvin E. Jensen
  3. RESEARCH PAPER NO. 38, EVAPORATION FROM PANS AND LAKES, M. A. KONLER, T. J. NORDENSON, and W. E. FOX
  4. Evaporation from a small water reservoir: Direct measurements and estimates, J. Tanny, S. Cohen, S. Assouline, F. Lange, A. Grava, D. Berger, B. Teltch, M.B. Parlange
  5. NOAA Technical Report NWS 34, Mean Monthly, Seasonal, and Annual Pan Evaporation for the United States
  6. Measurement and Estimation of Evaporation from Water Surfaces: Application to Dams in Arid and Semi Arid Areas in Algeria, Malika Fekih, Mohamed Saighi



PLV
First Published: 12/24/2013
Adapted for this website: 1/10/2018