El Vado Lake water level

We have not matched El Vado Lake to a public level gauge, so these readings come from SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography), a satellite run by NASA and the French space agency CNES since 2022. On each pass its radar maps the whole lake surface and reports one water surface elevation for it. NASA publishes the results through its Hydrocron service, and this page reads them live, keeping only passes that NASA flags as good or acceptable.

The satellite does not pass every day. Most lakes are measured every 10 to 21 days, sometimes twice in a few days, and a pass can be dropped when heavy rain, ice or a steep shoreline confuses the radar. The date of each pass is shown with its number, so you always know how fresh it is.

Each reading is the height of the water above sea level (the EGM2008 geoid), usually good to within half a foot on a lake this size. That is a different reference from a staff gauge on a dock or the "full pool" number a dam operator quotes, so the figure here may sit a foot or two away from theirs even when both are right. Use it for the trend: whether the lake has risen or fallen since the last pass, and by how much.

On a reservoir, a few feet of drop changes the shoreline more than you would think. Low water exposes stumps, sandbars and old roadbeds that are normally well under the hull, and some ramps end before the water does.

High water brings its own problems: floating debris after storms, flooded docks and courtesy piers, and no-wake rules near flooded campgrounds. A quick look at the trend before you hitch up saves a wasted trip.