Will we have a fish kill in 2025? Data thread

The old timers around here know I’m an engineer, so I’m all about the data. I used to be pretty obsessive and stress about water temps and trout kills, but eventually I came to realize that - why stress? Mother nature doesn’t care what I think :slight_smile:

Anyway, just out of curiosity and trying to learn about what exactly causes a fish kill, I have plotted some data. To keep it apples to apples, this is all Charleston Harbor water temps from NOAA.

Our two most recent documented fish kills were 2010 and 2018. Here I have plotted those two years (Red and Orange) along with the 2019 season which was unusually warm (Green) and this year (Purple). This is as of the last hour. You can see the uptick over the warm weekend and a sharp drop overnight.

Notably, 2010 had an extended period of time with water in the 40s. Guessing a lot of opportunity for Cormorants and Dolphins to fill up. 2018’s snowfall happened in early Jan and you can see the steep drop down to 42 deg. Pretty bad - although the overall kill wasn’t as bad as we thought, it turned out. Everyone volunteering to release ALL trout (remember #release2018sc?) made a huge impact in the rebound in my strong opinion.

Well, get your popcorn and watch. I’ll post and update around midday each day this week for those who are interested besides me.

Man, 2 Fridays ago the water was 40.4° but the reds were in the ditch that they’re in all year long, but this past weeks was a first ever complete bust with only mullet around. We never saw or bumped the first red which had me concerned with this despite the water being 49.2° now. It may not have killed them but it absolutely relocated them