24 October 2018. Lake Sweetwater is back, again. Eleven inches of rain in September and five more in early October finally triggered the watershed, resulting on 9 October in a sudden 11 foot rise in the lake. That was followed over the next two weeks by 6 more inches of rain and a rise of 11 more feet.
1 November 2018. Lake Sweetwater went over its spillway with a total gain since 8 October of 24.5 feet. The last time the lake exceeded its spillway was in June of 1997.
Lake Sweetwater is owned and operated by the nearby city of Sweetwater, Texas. The lake capacity when full is 4.5 billion gallons. The widest distance across the lake is about 7,000 feet, and when it is full it covers about 760 acres. The dam is 350 feet wide at its base and seventy feet high at its highest point, with a twenty-foot closed roadway across its top.