Why do some of the lakes in the Cascades drain seasonally?

I am working to model seasonally draining lakes in the Cascades in Leif Karlstrom's lab. By measuring how much water fills these lakes and how fast they drain, we hope to better understand the hydraulic properties of the High Cascades, and characterize an understudied aquifer.

We have deployed pressure-temperature sensors on the lake bottoms after they drained, and next year we will collect a complete time series of the lake filling and draining. Data will be matched to a numerical model written in Julia. Remote sensing volume and surface water from LiDAR and SWOT data will be incorporated, and ESA surface water data going back 40 years will be matched to our model to see how these draining trends have changed over time.

Once all of this is done, we will finally be able to answer the question on everyone's mind: what is the permeability of the rocks these leaky lakes lie on?