Fort Peck Lake Water Level
Fort Peck Lake is at 2,221.39 ft today (Oct 31), 28.61 ft below its 2,250 ft full pool, down 0.27 ft this week.
Montana · Missouri River
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Water level history
About Fort Peck Lake
Fort Peck Lake is a reservoir on the Missouri River in Montana, operated by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Its dam is one of the largest hydraulically filled earth dams in the world. Its full summer pool sits at 2250 ft above sea level. Live water levels come from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (CWMS) and update hourly.
Understanding Fort Peck Lake's water level
Fort Peck is the top of the Missouri River mainstem system, the first of the six Corps of Engineers dams on the river and the one that sees the Rocky Mountain snowmelt first. It sits at river mile 1771.5 near Glasgow, controls 57,500 square miles of drainage, and backs water about 134 valley miles upstream toward Zortman. The Corps manages it in stacked zones. Everything below 2160 feet is permanent pool, about 4.1 million acre-feet that is never drawn. From 2160 to 2234 is the carryover multiple use zone, 10.7 million acre-feet that carries the system through drought. From 2234 to 2246 is annual flood control and multiple use, and the top four feet, 2246 to 2250, are exclusive flood control. So 2250 is not a normal full lake; it is the maximum operating pool, and a reading anywhere near 2234 in spring means the reservoir is sitting at the base of its flood space, right where planners want it.
The level follows the Missouri basin's snowpack and the needs of the whole system downstream. Plains and mountain runoff lift the pool in spring and early summer, and releases through the five unit powerhouse draw it back down through fall and winter. In the 2019 to 2020 operating plan, for example, winter releases averaging 12,000 cubic feet per second were expected to drop the pool about 4.3 feet between December and the end of February, to near 2234 by 1 March. Each spring the Corps also tries to keep the lake rising during the forage fish spawn, when flooded shoreline brush becomes spawning and nursery cover. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks recommends a rise of two to three feet from early April to mid May. How well that works in a given year depends on the daily inflow, because the reservoir can only rise as fast as the river fills it.
The dam itself was a Public Works Administration project approved by President Roosevelt in October 1933, with work starting on 23 October that year. At the July 1936 peak it employed 10,546 people, and boomtowns such as Wheeler and New Deal grew up around it. Dredges pumped river sediment through miles of pipe to build the embankment hydraulically, about 125 million cubic yards of fill over a length of 21,026 feet. On 22 September 1938, roughly five million cubic yards of the upstream face slid away. Eight men were killed, and six of them are still buried in the dam. The river was closed in June 1937 and the project was completed in October 1940, with the first powerhouse following in 1951. The lake's shoreline runs about 1,520 miles at elevation 2234, and nearly all of it is bordered by the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge.
Fort Peck Lake — frequently asked
What is Fort Peck Lake's full pool elevation?
The 2250 foot figure is the maximum operating pool and the top of exclusive flood control, not a level the lake normally reaches. The Corps treats 2234 feet as the top of the carryover multiple use zone and the base of flood storage. Between 2234 and 2246 is annual flood control and multiple use space, and 2246 to 2250 is held exclusively for floods. Shoreline mileage is usually quoted at 2234.
What is Fort Peck Lake's record high level?
2252.3 feet on 15 June 2011, about 2.3 feet above the top of the exclusive flood control pool. It broke the previous record of 2251.6 feet set in July 1975. That summer the Corps opened all 16 spillway gates, only the fifth time the spillway had been used, and combined powerhouse and spillway releases reached nearly 66,000 cubic feet per second, close to double the 1975 release record.
What is Fort Peck Lake's record low level?
2196.2 feet in March 2007, at the end of a long drought across the upper Missouri basin. The previous record low was 2208.7 feet in April 1991. At its 2007 bottom the lake sat almost 38 feet below the 2234 base of the flood control zone and well into the carryover storage that exists for exactly that kind of dry run.
Why does Fort Peck's level matter for fishing?
State biologists tie the fishery closely to water. The record low in 2007 coincided with a 57 percent drop in walleye caught in annual gillnet surveys, and forage declined sharply. In 2011, record inflows and high elevations produced a large naturally spawned year class. A rising spring pool floods shoreline vegetation that cisco, shiners and young game fish use for spawning and rearing.
What fish are in Fort Peck Lake?
Walleye are the main management focus, backed by about three million fingerlings stocked a year. It is the only chinook salmon fishery in Montana, landlocked chinook first stocked in 1983 and kept going with at least 200,000 fingerlings annually. Lake trout were introduced in 1953 and now reproduce naturally. Cisco, introduced in 1984, feed nearly every predator, and paddlefish run up the Missouri above the reservoir to spawn each spring.
How was Fort Peck Dam built, and what was the 1938 slide?
It is a hydraulic fill dam: dredges pumped slurry from the river bottom through pipelines and let the material settle into the embankment, about 125 million cubic yards in all. On 22 September 1938 a section of the upstream face, roughly five million cubic yards, slid away on a weak shale foundation. Eight workers died, and six of them were never recovered and remain in the dam.
When does Fort Peck Lake rise and fall?
Inflow from plains snowmelt and the mountain snowpack lifts the pool in spring and early summer, and the Corps tries to keep it rising through the April to May fish spawn. Releases for downstream needs and hydropower then draw it down through fall and winter. In a typical operating plan the pool reaches its low point around the end of winter before the next runoff arrives.
Other lakes near Fort Peck Lake
- Tiber Reservoir (Lake Elwell)MT
- Canyon Ferry LakeMT
- Bighorn LakeMT/WY
- Lake Francis CaseSD
- Lewis and Clark LakeSD/NE
- Lake OaheSD/ND
See current levels for all 4 Montana lakes and reservoirs →
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