Lake Mead’s Water Level Is Falling

Water levels in Lake Mead, America’s largest reservoir, have fallen again despite recent improvements.

Lake Mead provides water to Nevada and Arizona, which it sits across, as well as California and some parts of Mexico. Around 25 million people are served by the reservoir.

According to Lakes Online, which records Lake Mead’s level twice a day, the level currently sits at 1,074.06 feet as of 7:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 13. This is 154.94 feet below its full pool level of 1,229 feet. Around 10 percent of the water in Lake Mead comes from local precipitation and groundwater, with the rest coming from snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains that flows down the Colorado River watershed through Lake Powell, Glen Canyon, and the Grand Canyon.

Lake Mead’s water levels reached a three-year high at the end of February, a vast improvement from the same period in previous years. In the same month of 2023, Lake Mead was measured as being at around 1,044 feet, 30 feet below its current level.

However, the lake recovered throughout the year, reaching highs of 1,066 feet in September. It continued to steadily rise, with some small drops here and here, until it began declining again in March 2024.

Heightened water levels earlier this year were down to heavy amounts of rainfall across the three states, but one expert has said conservation efforts helped the water rise.

“We are having some crazy precipitation here in Arizona, as other parts of the West, especially California, are also enjoying,” Andrea K. Gerlak, a professor at the University of Arizona and director at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, told Newsweek in February.

“As I understand it, Lake Mead is on the mend due largely to the system conservation efforts from this past year. This means it really works when the diverse users in the basin —from cities to tribes—get together and agree to reductions from the river for the greater good of the basin. Of course, federal funding to seed and nurture this certainly helps.”

Lake Mead has faced issues for a number of years. In 2022, drought paired with water overconsumption resulted in the lake’s water levels declining to its lowest point on record. In July 2022, water levels reached 1,040 feet—the lowest elevation recorded since the reservoir was first filled almost 100 years ago in the 1930s.

NASA said in 2022 that the then low levels at Lake Mead provided “a stark illustration of climate change and a long-term drought that may be the worst in the U.S. West in 12 centuries.”