Cyanos Activity for June 7 - 14, 2017

Water is clean for recreation.
Disclaimer: The information presented below reflects conditions throughout the lake and may differ from conditions on specific shorelines. For information regarding beach closings please contact the Torrington Area Health District or local town officials.



Water clarity continued to increase at all sites with Center Lake and North Bay stations increasing to nearly 3m.  In fact, six (6) sites in the lake had 3 meter or better Secchi disk depths, with a maximum of 3.2m, representing the best water clarity so far this year.  Cyanobacteria cell numbers dropped to lowest levels this season of 6-9K cells/mL.   This is a drastic decrease from 60K cells/mL on May 26th such that cyanobacteria were practically non-existent in the upper waters of the lake.  The water temperature at the surface decreased by about 2 oC in the 5 days since the last measurement due to the pro-longed period of rainy-overcast cool weather.  The lake is warming very slowly this year, last year at this time (June 1, 2016)  surface temperature of Bantam Lake was 25oC, almost 10 oC (18 oF) warmer than the temperature on June 7th, 2017. Bottom temperatures increased slightly since the last visit indicating that the lake as a whole is warming.  Surface cooling and increased whole lake mixing eliminated any hints of stratification noted during earlier visits.  With resumption of whole lake mixing dissolved oxygen levels are nearly fully saturated to the bottom.

Erratum:  Several errors were mistakenly published in the post was originally published on June 8, 2017.  The original post stated that the cell counts were 12,719 cells/ml, that the lake was thermally stratified, and the amount of dissolved oxygen was at anoxic levels in the deep lake depth.  I apologize for these errors and will make every attempt to avoid them in the future.  

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