“It’s now about a 20-year period,” Watras said.
The UW Trout Lake Station in Boulder Junction has kept records of lake levels since the 1940s. Those levels followed a consistent cycle for much of that time, but in the 2000s, when levels should have gone up, they continued to go down until the lakes reached their all-time low in 2013.
“We’ve just completed roughly 15 years of declining water levels,” said Watras.