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Sunday, November 03, 2024

The Scale of Lake Powell (3 mm = 1 BL)

 The other day I noticed that the level (elevation) of Lake Powell in the US changed by 0.01 ft:

I thought it would be fun to see how much water is in the 0.01 ft (= 3 mm). Subtracting the contents gives

785 acre-feet 
= 970,000 m3 
= 0.97 Mm3 
= 260 M gallons 
= 968 ML. 
≈ 1 billion liters

where L=liter. (using little L -- "l" -- for liter can get confusing).

So a water rise of 3 millimeters is about a billion liters of water. 

(I assumed vertical edges on the lake, so I can approximate the rise as a being in a box with nice vertical edges. But probably not a good assumption for more than that.)

PS: It's Excel's fault if I made any calculation errors. It always is. 

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