Can Lake Sam Rayburn Recover from This? The Pictures are Pretty Rough.
I can honestly say that I've never seen the Lake Sam Rayburn look this empty before. I grew up skiing and tubing on the lake, not to mention all the fishing trips I took there. But this is something completely different.
As I was driving down Highway 103 crossing the Angelina River yesterday, I got a chance to see just how low the lake levels really are. This is what I saw:
To give you an idea of the difference, this is what that same location looked like in October 2024:
Pretty crazy, right? Just over a year difference, and there's that much more dry land.
Not only have we had super-low rain levels over the past year, but last summer, the Army Corps of Engineers - that oversees the lake maintenance, repairs, etc. - had to do what they called a "controlled drawdown of water" so that work on dam embankments could continue. The full description can be found on the Army Corps of Engineers website, via their News Release Archives.
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But now the question is: Will the lake be able to recover from all of this? Boat ramps are closed because it's too dangerous to try and back the boats down to the water to launch them. Plus, with the levels this low, all the trees and tree stumps that were previously underwater are now exposed. And that doesn't even take into account the ones that are just below the surface, out of sight. Hitting one of these with a boat could be dangerous, if not fatal.
If we get more rain in 2026 - a substantial amount more than we got in 2025 - I would think that Sam Rayburn could make a recovery. But I'm not the expert on that.
I was able to get some other pictures of the lake, including one of the parks - Ewing Park. Take a look:
A Look at the Lake Sam Rayburn Low Levels - January 2026
Gallery Credit: Mark Cunningham