Reservoirs
Near normalShasta Lake level
Live reservoir storage and water level in Sacramento 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
- Shasta Lake level
- Unit
- acre-feet
- Calculation
- Daily reading
- Last observation
- Sep 23, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 2.48M af, 8% below the 5-yr median, 55% of capacity.
Shasta storage fell to 2.48M af, down 8.8% on the month. The lake sits 8% below its 5-year median, with year-over-year storage also down 8.4%.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 2.48M af | 2.52M af | -1.5% |
| Month over month | 2.48M af | 2.73M af | -8.8% |
| Year over year | 2.48M af | 2.71M af | -8.4% |
| vs 5-yr median | 2.48M af | 2.71M af | -8.4% |
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Latest reading, Sep 23, 2026 | 983.47 ft above sea level |
| Change from a week earlier | -1.87 ft |
| Change from a year earlier | -11.13 ft |
| 5-yr median for the date | 994.6 ft |
| Below full pool | 83.53 ft |
| Five-year low | 882.24 ft (Oct 21, 2021) |
| Five-year high | 1,064.12 ft (May 24, 2023) |
| 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 |
Previous weeks
Week of Sep 15, 2026
Shasta storage fell to 2.53M af, down 10.2% over the month and 8.3% from a year ago. The lake sits 8% below the 5-yr median.
Week of Sep 2, 2026
Shasta storage fell to 2.61M af, down 2.5% on the week and 13% on the month. The lake sits 8% below its 5-year median and holds 57% of capacity.
Week of Aug 26, 2026
Shasta storage fell to 2.68M af, down 3.6% on the week and 14.1% over the month. It sits 8% below the 5-year median at 59% of capacity.
Week of Aug 19, 2026
Shasta storage dropped to 2.78M af, down 14.4% over the past month. Year over year it is down 6.2%, sitting 6% below the 5-year median.
About Shasta Lake
Shasta Lake's water level is 983.47 feet above sea level as of Sep 23, 2026, 83.53 feet below full pool (1,067 feet), with 2.48 million acre-feet in storage (55% of capacity). That is 1.87 feet lower than a week earlier and 11.13 feet lower than a year earlier.
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.
Shasta Lake is one of the 21 major reservoirs this site totals each day, and one of several it tracks in the Sacramento 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 California Data Exchange Center.