Pond & Lake Reaction to Hurricane

Question: How do ponds and lakes react after a tropical weather event such as a hurricane?

Answer: A tropical storm or hurricane event can create some good things and bad things with ponds. Generally, because of the atmospheric pressure, all of your surface tension decreases, which allows most of your chemical elements in the water that are dissolved to become a gas again. So some of those chemical elements leaving the pond can be good and some can be bad. An example of a good would be nitrogen—nitrogen will turn back into a gas form, which doesn’t allow the plant to have a reproductive element in the water. The bad side is, it can also do it with oxygen. So oxygen will turn from a liquid to a gas, and then there’s no oxygen left to sustain fish, which will cause a fish kill.

The other thing that I guess we are seeing a lot is all of the organic vegetation that has fallen into the pond is, starts rotting. And as it rots, it’s consuming oxygen, which is causing delayed fish kills down the road.