Texas Medina Lake DROPS To 4% — The First American Town To Go Dry

Medina Lake has dropped to just 4% full — a Texas lake vanishing as an entire Hill Country town goes dry. Once the fourth-largest dam in America, Medina Lake near San Antonio is now 96% empty, its marinas closed and its docks stranded dozens of feet above cracked mud. But the drought is only half the story. A data expert working with residents found that 75% of every release from Medina Lake never reaches the farmers it's meant for — it seeps into 110-year-old earthen canals run by the Bexar-Medina-Atascosa (BMA) irrigation district. This is the slow, ongoing vanishing of a Texas reservoir: how a quarter-million acre-feet of water became a creek, why a once-in-a-generation 2025 flood couldn't refill it, and what it means for a drying American West where the systems built a century ago are leaking the water away faster than the rain can replace it. Sources: Water Data for Texas — Medina Lake (4.0% full, 2026-05-29): https://www.waterdatafortexas.org/res... San Antonio Report — As Medina Lake disappears, residents seek management changes: https://sanantonioreport.org/medina-l... The Texas Observer — The Medina and San Antonio Rivers Are Drying Up: https://www.texasobserver.org/staying... Texas State Historical Association — Medina Lake: https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/e... Edwards Aquifer — Medina Lake and Canal System: https://www.edwardsaquifer.net/medina... Bexar-Medina-Atascosa WCID History: https://bmawater.org/about-us/history/ USGS — Medina Lk nr San Antonio, TX: https://waterdata.usgs.gov/monitoring... KENS5 — Boats, cars on Medina Lake creating concerns: https://www.kens5.com/article/news/lo... #CrisisRadar #MedinaLake #Texas #TexasDrought #HillCountry #LakeVanishing #WaterCrisis #Bandera #DeadPool #DryLake #BMA #ClimateChange #USDrought #VanishingLake #SanAntonio #BrokenEarth