Severe Texas Drought in Pictures

I mentioned earlier that we are in a severe drought in Texas.  It is a 50 year drought, meaning it is the worst drought in 50 years.  I thought I would share some pictures so you could appreciate how drastic the drought really is.  All of these are taken at our lake property.  This is from the main land towards the right.  The normal shore is just barely to the right of the picture.  The dock shown is usually under water up to a foot below the planks.  Our island is to the left.  Needless to say it isn't much of an island now.  That's the bad news, the good news is that we our piece of land is a lot bigger right now;)

Here is another picture without the zoom on.  The dock in the back is the same dock.  After the water receded, we have found many posts in the ground where someone previously had had a dock.

Here is the same area when it is not in a drought. There is a low area just past the tree, that is why you see weeds through the water.  If you look closely, you can see the dock in the background. The tree that is leaning over the water has died.  It had an interesting death, so I will add pictures of that at the end of this post.

This is standing on the edge of the shore looking at the island.  Not the best picture, but the green at the top is the normal shoreline of the island. 

This is a picture of the same area last November.  Note that you can see the lake on the other side of the island.

 This is looking toward the left, the other direction at the shore. The edge of the trees to the right is the normal edge of the island.  We have a mud puddle now instead of a lake.  You can also see there are two new islands past ours that are normally not there.  Joe drove a 4-wheeler through the non-water part last week and drove to the back of the island.

The same area last November.

 Closer view of the "new" islands.

 This next picture is the far side of the island.  The regular shoreline is out of the picture to the right.

 Another view looking back toward the island.  You can see the bigger brush is the regular shoreline.

 This is from the opposite side of the island.  I have walked past it toward the deeper part of the lake and turned back to get a picture of the island. I am standing past the dock shown in the first picture. The island is the stand of trees that you see on the left of the picture.

 Another view with the camera turned towards shore.  The dock shown is the same dock as in the first picture, I just have walked past it and am looking back.

 With the water down so low, there are interesting things found at the bottom of the lake.  Someone lost their boat:

 We also saw several golf balls.  (Thanks, Austin).

 I thought this tree stump was beautiful with the way that it had eroded/decayed.

This is that tree that was in the old photo above.  With the drought we saw that it was bending over, almost touching the ground. Upon closer look, the truck was cracked all the way up.

 And when you looked inside, you could see that it was hollow.  Sadly, it is no longer with us, Joe cut it down last week.

Lastly, this is what happens when you drive a 4-wheeler loaded down with three people through not-so-solid mud.  All three of you are launched over the handlebars when the 4-wheeler gets stuck. The only casualty was Ellie's Crocs, which are stuck somewhere down in the mud. 

I read somewhere that in order to get out of the drought, we would need 16 inches of rain in one month.  If you were to spread the rain out over 6 months we would need 24 inches of rain.  Because that number is so high, they are forecasting that we will be in the drought for a LONG time.  Anyone thinking of the seven years of famine yet?