Guadalupe River is going dry in places

By Drew Joseph and Zeke MacCormack, Staff Writers : August 13, 2013 : Updated: August 13, 2013 7:54pm 

Photo By Bob Owen/San Antonio Express-News

 SPRING BRANCH — Vidal Mendoza scanned the Guadalupe River, looking for the right spot to measure the flow of the water. Or perhaps more accurately, Mendoza, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologic technician, was searching where the river should have been.

The river bed was mostly dry Tuesday, slowly baking and cracking in the sun, and the pools of the water that remained were shallow and still. It's the third time in five years that stretches of the Guadalupe above Canyon Lake have effectively gone dry, conditions not been seen in the preceding five decades.

“This is what you call dry,” said Mendoza, who has worked for the USGS for 25 years. “I don't think I've ever seen it like this.”

The river is so low that the Guadalupe River State Park had to shut off water to toilets and showers this week, but will resupply two campgrounds by the weekend.

The drought, now well into its third year, has also forced a water district in Kendall County to ban sprinklers.

Read the full story at ExpressNews.com.
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