PAGE — Heavy rain across northern Arizona and southern Utah has done something unusual for this time of year: pushed the nation’s two largest reservoirs upward, ABC15 reported.
Lake Mead, which hit a record low just last week, has gained about 11 inches to reach 1,038 feet, roughly 19 billion gallons of water. Lake Powell, which bottomed out at a record low on Sept. 15, has climbed nearly 11 feet since then, adding about 173 billion gallons and giving Glen Canyon Dam more room to keep generating hydropower.
From Oct. 20 to Oct. 22, unregulated inflow into Lake Powell jumped about four and a half times to 65,000 cubic feet per second, the second-highest October daily inflow since 1963. The boost came from rainfall rather than releases from upstream reservoirs.
Even so, Lake Powell remains down 12 feet for 2026, and its average level this year is the lowest on record, keeping the risk of reaching “dead pool” — when water can no longer pass through the dam — on the table as Colorado River states fight over future shortage rules.
Sources: ABC15. Thee Arizona Times uses AI-assisted reporting reviewed against the sources listed.
Photo: W. Bulach / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
