{"id":3262,"date":"2026-07-25T17:44:32","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T21:44:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=3262"},"modified":"2026-07-25T17:45:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T21:45:44","slug":"one-month-into-rainy-season-peace-river-flows-extremely-low","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/?p=3262","title":{"rendered":"One Month Into Rainy Season, Upper Peace River Flows Extremely Low"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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As scientists at the Southwest Florida Water Management District complete the updated report on minimum flows in the Upper Peace River, the flow remains extremely low one month into the rainy season, according to the latest data.
Flow at State Road 60 in Bartow was 5 percent of average for this time of year.
Flow at Fort Meade was 4 percent of average.
Flow at Zolfo Springs in Hardee County was 13 percent, which appeared to have been aided by recent rains, according to the US Geological Survey website.
Farther downstream in Arcadia the river was flowing at 6 percent of average for this time year.
This reflects the effects of drought conditions that caused Swiftmud officials to close the P11 structure on Saddle Creek south of Lake Hancock in April to maintain the water level in the lake as much as possible in the absence of rain.
It is unclear at this point when river flows will recover, though they are a little higher now than they were a month or so ago as a result of scattered showers that seemed to have sent some water downstream from tributaries.
Whether this drought will be an isolated event or will be an ongoing problem that may be tied to climate change is something that will only be clearer as time goes by.
However, whether there will be recurring droughts here will influence the confidence in the Swiftmud minimum flow models for the Upper Peace River, which predict the river will meet its minimum flows for the next 20 years.
This is something the younger readers of this blog will have to check on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As scientists at the Southwest Florida Water Management District complete the updated report on minimum flows in the Upper Peace River, the flow remains extremely low one month into the rainy season, according to the latest data.Flow at State Road 60 in Bartow was 5 percent of average for this time of year.Flow at Fort […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gci"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3262"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3271,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3262\/revisions\/3271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ancientislands.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}