Reservoirs
Below normalElephant Butte Reservoir water level
Live reservoir storage and water level in Rio Grande basin, New Mexico
Data through Aug 12, 2026 · source last checked Aug 13, 2026 · page revised Aug 13, 2026
Cite
- Storage
About this data
- Source
- US Bureau of Reclamation RISE; California reservoirs via CA DWR CDEC
- Series
- End-of-day reservoir storage
- Geography
- Elephant Butte Reservoir water level
- Unit
- acre-feet
- Calculation
- Daily reading
- Last observation
- Aug 12, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 27,141 af, 73% below the 5-yr median, 1% of capacity.
Elephant Butte storage fell to 27,118 af, just 1% of capacity and 75% below the 5-year median. The reservoir dropped 47.6% over the past month and 63.5% from a year ago, though week over week storage rose 0.8%. The basin remains severely depleted going into the late summer.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 27,141 af | 26,982 af | +0.6% |
| Month over month | 27,141 af | 47,275 af | -42.6% |
| Year over year | 27,141 af | 74,374 af | -63.5% |
| vs 5-yr median | 27,141 af | 101,235 af | -73.2% |
| Measure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Full pool elevation | 4,407 ft above sea level (top of active conservation pool) | USBR |
| Maximum depth at the dam | 197 ft | USBR |
| Surface area at full pool | 42,750 acres | USACE NID |
| Total capacity | 2,010,900 acre-feet | USBR |
About Elephant Butte Reservoir
Elephant Butte Dam impounds the Rio Grande in southern New Mexico, the principal storage reservoir of the Rio Grande Project. It is the largest reservoir in New Mexico, more than two million acre-feet at full pool. Reclamation dispatches its water for irrigation in the Rincon and Mesilla valleys and around El Paso, along with deliveries to Mexico under a 1906 treaty.
Total capacity is 2.01M af, over the past five years storage has ranged from 26,732 af to 570,686 af.
Those figures describe the reservoir at full pool, not today. The chart at the top of this page tracks storage in acre-feet rather than water depth, so read the current figure against total capacity for how full the reservoir is, and against the full pool elevation and maximum depth for the size of the water column behind the dam. The two do not move together one for one: a reservoir narrows as it deepens, so one holding half its capacity still stands more than half as deep.
Sources: full pool elevation and maximum depth from the Bureau of Reclamation; surface area from the Army Corps' National Inventory of Dams; total capacity from the Bureau of Reclamation.