Reservoirs
Near normalShasta Lake level
Live reservoir storage and water level in Sacramento basin, California
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
- Shasta Lake level
- Unit
- acre-feet
- Calculation
- Daily reading
- Last observation
- Aug 12, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 2.87M af, 6% below the 5-yr median, 63% of capacity.
Shasta storage fell to 2.91M af, down 3.5% on the week and 14.4% from a month ago. The lake sits 5% below its 5-year median and holds 64% of capacity.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 2.87M af | 2.98M af | -3.7% |
| Month over month | 2.87M af | 3.36M af | -14.6% |
| Year over year | 2.87M af | 3.04M af | -5.6% |
| vs 5-yr median | 2.87M af | 3.04M af | -5.6% |
| Measure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Full pool elevation | 1,067 ft above sea level | USBR |
| Maximum depth at the dam | 522.5 ft | USBR |
| Surface area at full pool | 30,210 acres | USACE NID |
| Total capacity | 4,552,000 acre-feet | CDEC |
About Shasta Lake
Shasta Dam blocks the upper Sacramento River north of Redding and anchors the Central Valley Project. At roughly 4.5 million acre-feet it is the largest reservoir in California, holding close to 40 percent of the CVP's stored water. Reclamation runs it for irrigation, flood control, hydropower, and cold-water releases that protect salmon downstream.
Total capacity is 4.55M af, over the past five years storage has ranged from 967,370 af to 4.47M 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 California Data Exchange Center.