Reservoirs
Below normalLake Mead water level
Live reservoir storage and water level in Colorado (Lower) basin, Nevada / Arizona
Data through Oct 15, 2026 · source last checked Oct 17, 2026 · page revised Oct 16, 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
- Lake Mead water level
- Unit
- acre-feet
- Calculation
- Daily reading
- Last observation
- Oct 15, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 6.81M af, 22% below the 5-yr median, 26% of capacity.
Lake Mead storage stands at 6.81M af, down 1.1% on the month and 17.5% year over year. The reservoir sits 22% below its 5-year median and holds 26% of capacity.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 6.81M af | 6.81M af | -0.1% |
| Month over month | 6.81M af | 6.89M af | -1.1% |
| Year over year | 6.81M af | 8.25M af | -17.5% |
| vs 5-yr median | 6.81M af | 8.70M af | -21.7% |
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Latest reading, Oct 15, 2026 | 1,037.53 ft above sea level |
| Change from a week earlier | -0.08 ft |
| Change from a year earlier | -20.18 ft |
| 5-yr median for the date | 1,063.6 ft |
| Below full pool | 182.07 ft |
| Five-year low | 1,037.53 ft (Oct 15, 2026) |
| Five-year high | 1,076.62 ft (Mar 4, 2024) |
| Measure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Full pool elevation | 1,219.6 ft above sea level (top of joint use pool) | USBR |
| Maximum depth at the dam | 576 ft | USBR |
| Surface area at full pool | 162,700 acres | USACE NID |
| Total capacity | 26,120,000 acre-feet | USBR |
Previous weeks
An earlier week
Lake Mead holds 6.81M af, down 17.5% year over year. The reservoir sits 22% below the 5-year median and at 26% of capacity. Over the month, storage fell 1.2%, with the week essentially unchanged.
Week of Oct 7, 2026
Lake Mead storage fell to 6.82M af, down 17.6% year over year. Storage sits 22% below the 5-yr median and at 26% of capacity.
Week of Sep 23, 2026
Lake Mead storage stands at 6.84M af, down 16.3% from a year ago and 21% below the 5-year median. The reservoir has shed 1.2% month over month and 0.4% on the week, holding 26% of capacity.
Week of Sep 15, 2026
Lake Mead storage fell to 6.89M af, down 16% from a year ago and 21% below the 5-year median. The reservoir holds 26% of capacity. This month saw a 1.1% decline.
About Lake Mead
Lake Mead's water level is 1,037.53 feet above sea level as of Oct 15, 2026, 182.07 feet below full pool (1,219.6 feet), with 6.81 million acre-feet in storage (26% of capacity). That is 0.08 feet lower than a week earlier and 20.18 feet lower than a year earlier, and the lowest reading in five years.
Hoover Dam created Lake Mead on the Colorado River at the Nevada-Arizona line, the largest reservoir in the United States by capacity at 26.12 million acre-feet at full pool. Reclamation operates it as the main bank of the Lower Colorado, delivering water to Arizona, Nevada, California, and Mexico while generating power at the dam. Sustained drought has kept live storage far below full pool.
Total capacity is 26.12M af, over the past five years storage has ranged from 6.81M af to 9.73M af.
Lake Mead is one of the 21 major reservoirs this site totals each day, and one of several it tracks in the Colorado (Lower) basin. For the combined picture, western reservoir levels carries the storage of all 21 on one chart, which is the number to watch when the question is about the West as a whole rather than about this project.
Those figures describe the reservoir at full pool, not today. The chart at the top of this page tracks storage in acre-feet and the elevation table tracks the water surface in feet, so read storage against total capacity for how full the reservoir is, and the elevation 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.
Rain near the lake barely moves this reading. An inch of rain landing on Lake Mead adds about an inch to its surface, while the level itself is set by Colorado River water released from Lake Powell upstream and by what Hoover Dam lets out below; what rain does to the Lake Mead water level works through the numbers.
This page carries the daily reading for the past five years. For the level in every year since 1935, Lake Mead water level by year charts the end-of-year reading with each year's low and high, back to the first fill behind Hoover Dam.
The low-water lines at Hoover Dam are written in the same feet as this reading: minimum power pool at 950 feet, below which the turbines stop, and dead pool at 895 feet, below which no water can leave the lake by gravity. The lake fell below 1,050 feet, Hoover's turbine floor before five wide-head turbines went in between 2011 and 2016, on Jun 1, 2026 (1,049.73 feet); what dead pool means at Lake Mead and Lake Powell covers every threshold.