Reservoirs
Near normalNew Melones Lake level
Live reservoir storage and water level in San Joaquin basin, California
Data through Sep 23, 2026 · source last checked Oct 1, 2026 · page revised Sep 24, 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
- New Melones Lake level
- Unit
- acre-feet
- Calculation
- Daily reading
- Last observation
- Sep 23, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 1.54M af, 5% below the 5-yr median, 64% of capacity.
Storage at New Melones Lake stands at 1.54M af, 5% below the 5-year median and down 5.1% year over year. The lake dropped 0.3% over the past week and 1.9% over the month. The reservoir is at 64% of capacity.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 1.54M af | 1.55M af | -0.3% |
| Month over month | 1.54M af | 1.57M af | -1.9% |
| Year over year | 1.54M af | 1.62M af | -5.1% |
| vs 5-yr median | 1.54M af | 1.62M af | -5.1% |
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Latest reading, Sep 23, 2026 | 1,007.46 ft above sea level |
| Change from a week earlier | -0.57 ft |
| Change from a year earlier | -8.56 ft |
| 5-yr median for the date | 1,016.02 ft |
| Below full pool | 80.54 ft |
| Five-year low | 874.62 ft (Nov 1, 2022) |
| Five-year high | 1,061.52 ft (Jun 7, 2024) |
| Measure | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Full pool elevation | 1,088 ft above sea level (top of joint use pool, at the spillway crest) | USBR |
| Surface area at full pool | 13,450 acres | USACE NID |
| Total capacity | 2,400,000 acre-feet | CDEC |
Previous weeks
Week of Sep 15, 2026
New Melones Lake held 1.55M af as of September 15, 5% below the 5-year median and 64% of capacity. Storage has declined 2.1% since the end of August and 5.2% year over year.
Week of Sep 2, 2026
New Melones storage stands at 1.56M af, down 5.3% from a year ago and 5% below the 5-year median. Week over week the lake shed 0.6%, while the month-over-month decline was 3.1%.
Week of Aug 26, 2026
New Melones storage fell to 1.57M af, down 5.6% year over year. Over the month it dropped 3.5%. The lake sits 6% below its 5-year median.
Week of Aug 19, 2026
New Melones Lake storage stands at 1.58M af, down 4.0% month over month and 5.8% year over year. The reservoir sits 6% below the 5-year median.
About New Melones Lake
New Melones Lake's water level is 1,007.46 feet above sea level as of Sep 23, 2026, 80.54 feet below full pool (1,088 feet), with 1.54 million acre-feet in storage (64% of capacity). That is 0.57 feet lower than a week earlier and 8.56 feet lower than a year earlier.
New Melones Dam impounds the Stanislaus River in the Sierra foothills and ranks among the largest CVP reservoirs at about 2.4 million acre-feet. Reclamation balances it across flood control, senior water rights on the Stanislaus, irrigation, hydropower, and fishery releases. By capacity it sits among the four biggest reservoirs in California.
Total capacity is 2.40M af, over the past five years storage has ranged from 583,412 af to 2.10M af.
New Melones Lake is one of the 21 major reservoirs this site totals each day, and one of several it tracks in the San Joaquin 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 for how far the surface sits below a full reservoir. 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 from the Bureau of Reclamation; surface area from the Army Corps' National Inventory of Dams; total capacity from the California Data Exchange Center.