Streamflow
Below normalColorado River at Lees Ferry streamflow
Daily mean discharge, Colorado (Compact Point) basin, Arizona
Data through Oct 26, 2026 · source last checked Oct 30, 2026 · page revised Oct 28, 2026
Cite
- Discharge
About this data
- Source
- US Geological Survey (USGS)
- Series
- Daily mean streamflow (discharge)
- Geography
- Colorado River at Lees Ferry
- Unit
- cfs
- Calculation
- Daily mean
- Last observation
- Oct 26, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 6,480 cfs, 18% below the 5-yr median.
Lees Ferry streamflow was 6,480 cfs, 18% below the 5-year median. Flow fell 20.9% month over month and 12.6% year over year. Week to week the gauge declined just 1.4%.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 6,480 cfs | 6,570 cfs | -1.4% |
| Month over month | 6,480 cfs | 8,190 cfs | -20.9% |
| Year over year | 6,480 cfs | 7,410 cfs | -12.6% |
| vs 5-yr median | 6,480 cfs | 7,900 cfs | -18.0% |
| Reading | Discharge |
|---|---|
| Lowest on record for this week | 6,880 cfs |
| Median for this week | 7,900 cfs |
| Highest on record for this week | 8,890 cfs |
Previous weeks
Week of Oct 25, 2026
Discharge at Lees Ferry ran 6,510 cfs, down 20.6% from a month ago. The flow sits 17% below the 5-yr median.
An earlier week
Discharge at Lees Ferry is 6,470 cfs, 17% below the 5-year median. Flow is down 21.3% on the month and 16.8% year-over-year.
An earlier week
Lees Ferry discharge stands at 6,480 cfs, 18% below the 5-yr median. Month-over-month flow dropped 19.7%, and year-over-year it fell 17.3%.
An earlier week
Colorado River discharge at Lees Ferry is 6,570 cfs, 17% below the 5-year median. Flow has dropped 14.5% over the past month and 15.9% year over year.
About Colorado River at Lees Ferry
The Colorado River at Lees Ferry ran 6,480 cfs on Oct 26, 2026: 6,480 cubic feet of water passing the gauge every second (what cfs means), or about 12,853 acre-feet a day. In gallons, that is about 2,908,425 gallons per minute (convert cfs to gpm). That is 18% below the 5-year median of 7,900 cfs for the date, and below the lowest reading for this week of the year in the 5-year record (6,880 cfs). A month earlier it ran 8,190 cfs on Sep 26, 2026, so the river has fallen 21% since then. The water passing Lees Ferry was released from Lake Powell at Glen Canyon Dam and runs on through Grand Canyon into Lake Mead, so this line is the main supply of the lake below it.
USGS gage 09380000 sits on the Colorado River at Lees Ferry, Arizona, about 15 miles below Glen Canyon Dam and just above the head of Grand Canyon. It is the most consequential streamflow station in the West: the Colorado River Compact divides the basin at this point, and the Upper Basin's delivery obligation to the Lower Basin is measured as flow past this gage.
Because it sits below Glen Canyon Dam, what it records is almost entirely a release schedule rather than a hydrograph. Reclamation sets an annual release volume for Lake Powell and shapes it month to month, so the natural snowmelt peak that dominates every unregulated gage upstream barely appears here; the visible pattern is instead the daily and seasonal rhythm of hydropower generation. A change in the level of this line is a change in policy, usually an annual operating decision made months earlier, and it shows up downstream in Lake Mead.