Reservoirs
Near normalNew Melones Lake level
Live reservoir storage and water level in San Joaquin basin, California
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
- New Melones Lake level
- Unit
- acre-feet
- Calculation
- Daily reading
- Last observation
- Oct 15, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 1.51M af, 6% below the 5-yr median, 63% of capacity.
New Melones holds 1.51M af, 6% below the 5-year median and 63% of capacity. Storage fell 2.1% over the month and stands 6.4% below year-ago levels.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 1.51M af | 1.52M af | -0.6% |
| Month over month | 1.51M af | 1.55M af | -2.1% |
| Year over year | 1.51M af | 1.62M af | -6.4% |
| vs 5-yr median | 1.51M af | 1.62M af | -6.4% |
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Latest reading, Oct 15, 2026 | 1,004.67 ft above sea level |
| Change from a week earlier | -0.99 ft |
| Change from a year earlier | -10.92 ft |
| 5-yr median for the date | 1,015.59 ft |
| Below full pool | 83.33 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
An earlier week
New Melones storage stands at 1.52M af, 6% below the 5-year median. The lake has declined 2% over the past month and 6.3% year-over-year. At 63% of capacity, storage reflects typical fall-season drawdown.
Week of Oct 7, 2026
New Melones storage stands at 1.53M af, down 1.9% from the prior month. The lake sits 6% below its 5-year median for this period.
Week of Sep 23, 2026
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.
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.
About New Melones Lake
New Melones Lake's water level is 1,004.67 feet above sea level as of Oct 15, 2026, 83.33 feet below full pool (1,088 feet), with 1.51 million acre-feet in storage (63% of capacity). That is 0.99 feet lower than a week earlier and 10.92 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.