Drainage Density at Camp Champions

We are grateful to reside in a location with exceptionally low drainage density.

This is a measurement of the density of tributaries across the land area of a watershed. High drainage density areas are prone to flash flooding, whereas low drainage density areas are not.

In the 8 miles of river upstream of us, there are only three primary tributary creeks to either the Colorado River or the Llano River (Mill Creek, Williams Creek, and Moss Creek).

This means that during a rain event, there are not enough stream channels to collect water into a small area that would create the conditions for a flash flood. Instead, water spreads out over a larger area and flows slowly into the lake (often as groundwater).

Further upriver, the dam at Lake Buchanan shields Lake LBJ from excess runoff from the Colorado River. The Llano River is not dammed, but does have effective monitoring stations that give both us and the LCRA good advance information about what to expect about river flow and lake levels.

Finally, the Lake LBJ basin is wide, and the primary river channel is on the opposite side of the lake from us. The width distributes any excess water over a larger area, further preventing flash-type floods. And if there is a current (which is rare), it runs through the channel a few hundred feet from our shoreline.

All of this means that the conditions simply aren’t present for flash flooding in our specific location. We have seen lake levels rise slowly a few times since 2000, but each time it happened over a period of hours and there has never been a case of rushing water on our campgrounds.