Elephant Butte Lake Water Level Today
109.7 ft below full pool, 4.8% full, and 3.9 ft higher than a year ago.
Daily reading for Oct 25
Trend and source week, month, year
Source: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Check it at www.waterdatafortexas.org/reservoirs/individual/elephant-butte
Elephant Butte Lake, New Mexico. Run by USBR.
Elephant Butte Lake level
Daily level, past 12 months, feet above sea level (NGVD29). Shaded: the normal range, the middle half of readings for each date, 1991 to 2025. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
Monthly average since Mar 21, 1915; gaps where the record is missing. U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.
About Elephant Butte Lake today
How full is Elephant Butte Lake?4.8% full, 109.7 ft below full pool
4.8% full by storage on Oct 25. RISE storage / total storage 2,109,423 af at 4,407 ft (Reclamation project data). Reclamation's headline figure is 2,210,298 af; the project-data value matches the 4,407 ft full pool used here.
Full pool is 4,407.00 ft.
How low is Elephant Butte Lake?39.2 ft above its lowest since 1915
109.7 ft below full pool. The lowest daily level in our record since 1915 is 4,258.03 ft, on Aug 6, 1954.
Has Elephant Butte Lake risen?Yes: up 1.06 ft this week
| Change | Feet | Level then |
|---|---|---|
| Past day (since Oct 24) | 0.31 up | 4,296.95 |
| Past 7 days (since Oct 18) | 1.06 up | 4,296.20 |
| Past 30 days (since Sep 25) | 18.86 up | 4,278.40 |
| Past year (since Oct 25, 2025) | 3.88 up | 4,293.38 |
Why is Elephant Butte Lake low?Drought
Several years of extreme drought in the Rio Grande basin, made worse by the earliest snowmelt on record in 2026, drove the reservoir to its lowest level since 1971.
“The earliest snowmelt on record at the river’s headwaters in the southern Rockies exacerbated the situation in 2026.”
Source: NASA Earth Observatory, "Elephant Butte Reservoir Runs Low", Aug 19, 2026 (about Jul 27, 2026); a federal agency, not the operator.
Normal for Oct 25 is 4,326.54 ft: the median of 245 daily readings within 3 days of this date, 1991 to 2025. Elephant Butte Lake is 29.3 ft below it.
What is the water temperature at Elephant Butte Lake?No official reading for this lake
No USGS in-lake water-temperature gauge found within the lake area (checked 2026-10-24). Stream gauges above or below the dam were not used: tailwater and inflow temperatures differ from the lake surface.
When was Elephant Butte Lake last full?Nov 22, 1986
The last day in our record at or above 4,407.00 ft, today's full pool.
Elephant Butte Lake full pool level4,407.00 ft
Elevations are feet above sea level (NGVD29).
Where it comes from: Bureau of Reclamation project page (usbr.gov/projects/index.php?id=94): top of active conservation pool 4,407.0 ft. TWDB lists 4,405.59 ft on a different survey; open question in the report.
Elephant Butte Lake this time last year4,293.4 ft on Oct 25, 2025
3.9 ft higher than a year ago.
Levels: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, daily reading for Oct 25. Normal and records come from Creek & Lake's stored daily history (40,674 days since 1915); they aren't official unless the operator publishes the same value.