We hope you have found our weekly lake water quality updates informative. We have put our boats in winter storage. Time to get ready to enjoy winter soon. We plan to resume our weekly lake water quality updates in mid-May 2021. We will make sporadic updates over the winter on lake events like ice in, ice out, etc.
Fall color is peaking around Honeoye Lake. These pictures were taken on Monday Oct. 12th:
Surface Water Temperature: 60.8 F
Water Clarity: 9.5 Feet
Lake Level: 803.3 Feet above sea level
Lake Level Relative to Weir: -0.2 Feet
Observations: Monday (10/12/20), Today we observed that the water column has been clearing rapidly since last Thursday. Very little algae were visible. Water clarity increased by ~4 foot to 9.5 feet over the last week. This water clarity is a about 50% higher than normal water clarity for mid-October (Water Clarity Ave. ~6.6 Feet). Surface water temperature decreased about 2.7 F to 60.8 F. Lake level was 803.3 feet above sea level the same as last week. Today’s lake pictures:
Today the lake was still isothermal. Isothermal means the water column has uniform water temperature from top to bottom. The water is colder than last Monday due to the colder fall weather over the last week. The dissolved oxygen level was also relatively high and well mixed from top to bottom in the water column. This means that currently no additional phosphorus is being released from the bottom sediments given the relatively high dissolved oxygen level near the bottom.
1 meter (m) = 3.3 Feet and 1 Degree Centigrade ( C ) = 1.8 Fahrenheit (F)
October 12th Temperature & Dissolved Oxygen Data
Always use your own visual assessment before making contact with the lake water at this time of year as the blue-green algae situation can change daily if not hourly. Please regularly check the DEC HABs alert map for more detailed updates on Honeoye Lake HABs alerts:
Finger lakes Community College is starting it’s Speaking of Nature Talk series. This year these nature talks will be via WebEx rather than in person at the FLCC Muller Field Station. The next nature talk is:
Here is the link to register for the event (not clickable in the above image):