Colorado River water levels

Lake Powell's water level is 3,531.02 feet above sea level as of Oct 28, 2026, 168.98 feet below full pool (3,700 feet), with 5.90 million acre-feet in storage (24% of capacity). Lake Mead's is 1,038.38 feet above sea level as of Oct 28, 2026, 181.22 feet below full pool (1,219.6 feet), with 6.87 million acre-feet in storage (26% of capacity). Together the two hold 12.76 million acre-feet, 25% of their combined capacity of 50.44 million acre-feet, 21% below the 5-yr median for the date.

On those readings Lake Powell stood 41.02 feet above minimum power pool (3,490 feet), the level below which Glen Canyon Dam stops generating, and Lake Mead stood 88.38 feet above minimum power pool (950 feet). What dead pool means at Lake Mead and Lake Powell covers every line below those.

The river itself is measured as flow, not as a level. Colorado River at Lees Ferry, about 15 miles below Glen Canyon Dam, carried 6,480 cfs on Oct 26, 2026, 18% below the 5-yr median for the date: that is Lake Powell's release, on its way through Grand Canyon to Lake Mead. Upstream, Colorado River near Cisco, the last main-stem gauge above the Green River, carried 4,740 cfs on Oct 28, 2026, 23% above the 5-yr median for the date, part of the runoff that fills Lake Powell.

Above Lake Powell, the upper basin's tracked storage reservoirs ran from Blue Mesa Reservoir on the Gunnison River at 16% to Fontenelle Reservoir on the Green River at 81% of capacity on their latest readings, with Flaming Gorge Reservoir on the Green River at 66% and Navajo Reservoir on the San Juan River at 67% between. Their releases reach Lake Powell by way of the Green, the Gunnison and the San Juan.

Below Hoover Dam, Lake Mohave re-regulates Hoover's releases for users downstream and the treaty delivery to Mexico, and Lake Havasu is the forebay for the Central Arizona Project and Metropolitan Water District's Colorado River Aqueduct. Both are held in a narrow band: over the past five years Lake Mohave's storage ranged from 80% to 99% of capacity and Lake Havasu's from 80% to 98%, against 26% to 37% at Lake Mead. A run of dry years shows up in Powell and Mead, not in the lakes below them.

The Colorado River system in charts explains the 1922 split and the operating rules behind the Powell and Mead lines, what states the Colorado River flows through follows the route to Mexico, and Lake Mead water level by year has the record back to 1935. The water map draws every tracked reservoir and gauge across the West.