Millerton Lake Water Level
Millerton Lake is at 502.67 ft today (Oct 30), 75.33 ft below its 578 ft full pool, up 0.09 ft this week.
California · San Joaquin River
Get a text when Millerton Lake crosses a level you pick →
Sponsor Millerton Lake
Put your marina, real-estate, or local business in front of everyone checking this lake's level. One exclusive sponsor per lake.
Renews automatically each month or year until you cancel. Cancel anytime online. Terms · Manage or cancel · Questions?
Water level history
About Millerton Lake
Millerton Lake is a reservoir on the San Joaquin River in California, operated by U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Friant Dam holds it back at the head of the San Joaquin Valley. Its full summer pool sits at 578 ft above sea level. Live water levels come from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (CWMS) and update hourly.
Understanding Millerton Lake's water level
Millerton is a small bucket under a big river. Friant Dam, a 319-foot concrete gravity dam the Bureau of Reclamation completed in 1942, holds about 520,500 acre-feet at the 578-foot full pool, while the San Joaquin above it averaged about 1.79 million acre-feet of unimpaired runoff a year between 1873 and 1977, more than three times what the lake can store. Reclamation runs it as an annual reservoir: each year's supply is allocated with the expectation that it will be delivered, and release schedules aim to draw storage down to minimum levels by the end of September. The canals stop drawing at roughly 130,000 acre-feet, so that is the practical floor, and State Parks gives the working range as 471 to 578 feet. From October through March the lake also has to hold 170,000 acre-feet of flood space, up to 85,000 of which can be kept in Mammoth Pool upstream instead, and releases to the river are held to 8,000 cubic feet per second when possible. The result is a lake that can move more than a hundred feet in a year. Reclamation's own analysis found the level changes a foot or more on almost half of all days.
Very little of that water is meant to stay in the river. The Friant Division of the Central Valley Project sends it north through the 35.9-mile Madera Canal toward the Chowchilla River and south through the Friant-Kern Canal, 151.8 miles to the Kern River near Bakersfield, serving about a million acres in Fresno, Kern, Madera and Tulare counties. For decades about 60 miles of the San Joaquin below Friant were dry in most years. NRDC v. Rodgers, filed in 1988 over the renewal of Friant contracts, ended in a settlement signed September 13, 2006 that called for restoring flows and salmon down to the Merced River confluence. Interim flows began October 1, 2009, and full Restoration Flows on January 1, 2014, though drought curtailed them in 2014 and 2015. Reclamation could not get enough Delta water for the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors, whose older river rights were traded for Delta water when the project was built, so it gave them Millerton water and left Friant contractors, including the City of Fresno, with zero. The Court of Federal Claims sided with the government in 2022, and the Supreme Court declined the case in December 2025.
2023 showed the whole range in one season. With a huge snowpack waiting in the high country, Reclamation ran about 9,000 cubic feet per second down the river through April, taking the lake from 533 feet on April 1 to 475 feet by April 22. It bottomed at 471.89 feet on May 8, then snowmelt lifted it 108 feet in ten weeks, to 579.65 feet on July 19, with water going over the spillway. Canal deliveries pulled it back down to 469.95 feet on November 8, about 138,000 acre-feet in storage. Drought years can look calmer on the gauge: in 2015 the lake never rose above 496.3 feet or fell below 477, because there was little water coming in or going out. Beneath the lake is the site of Millerton, the Gold Rush town that grew from a tent camp called Rootville and served as the Fresno County seat from 1856 to 1874, along with Camp Barbour, an Army post built in 1850. The town's 1867 courthouse was dismantled in 1941 and rebuilt at Mariner's Point on the south shore, where it still overlooks the water.
Millerton Lake — frequently asked
What is Millerton Lake's full pool?
578 feet. At that level the lake holds about 520,500 acre-feet and covers roughly 4,900 acres, according to California State Parks, and Reclamation rates the spillway at 83,000 cubic feet per second with the water at 578. The level can briefly run a little higher when flows are passing over the spillway gates, as in July 2023 and June 2024, when it reached 579.65 and 578.94 feet.
Why does Millerton Lake drop so much every year?
Because it is built to. Millerton is operated as an annual reservoir, and Reclamation plans releases to draw it toward minimum storage by the end of September. Water leaves through the Friant-Kern and Madera canals for irrigation and through the river for water rights and restoration flows. Below about 130,000 acre-feet the canals cannot draw, so late summer and fall lows in the 470s are a normal part of the cycle, not a sign of trouble.
What is Millerton Lake's record high level?
The lake gauge panel on this page covers only about 2020 onward. Within that window the high is 579.65 feet on July 19, 2023, when snowmelt from that winter's huge snowpack filled the lake and Reclamation spilled about 1,600 cubic feet per second over the dam that day. In the state's CDEC daily record no reading since 2000 is higher; earlier daily data contains obvious errors and is not a reliable guide to older records.
What is the lowest Millerton Lake has been?
On this page's recent record, 469.95 feet on November 8, 2023, with about 138,000 acre-feet in storage. It looks odd next to a record high the same year, but it is real: Reclamation's daily operations report shows the Friant-Kern Canal running close to 2,500 cubic feet per second through October, draining the lake to near the canal floor before winter. It is the lowest daily reading in the CDEC record since at least 2000.
Why was Millerton Lake so low in spring 2023 when the snowpack was huge?
To make room. Millerton holds only about a third of the river's average runoff, so ahead of the 2023 melt Reclamation released about 9,000 cubic feet per second to the river through most of April. The lake fell from 533 feet on April 1 to 471.89 feet on May 8. Inflow then outran releases, and the lake rose 108 feet to reach full pool in mid July.
Who gets the water in Millerton Lake?
Friant Division contractors on the east side of the San Joaquin Valley, from the Chowchilla River south toward Bakersfield, plus releases to the river under the San Joaquin River Restoration Program. In 2014, short of Delta water, Reclamation sent Millerton water to the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractors and gave Friant contractors zero. The courts upheld that in 2022, and in 2024 the parties signed a drought agreement meant to avoid another call on Friant supplies.
What fish are in Millerton Lake?
Reclamation's 2009 study of the reservoir lists spotted, largemouth and smallmouth bass as principal game fish, along with bluegill, black crappie and striped bass, with threadfin shad as the main forage. Millerton also holds the only known landlocked population of American shad that spawns successfully, introduced in the 1950s. Most native species have disappeared from the lake, and the same study names steep water level swings as a major limit on fish habitat.
Other lakes near Millerton Lake
- New Bullards Bar ReservoirCA
- Lake McClureCA
- New Hogan LakeCA
- Los Banos ReservoirCA
- New Melones LakeCA
- Lake KaweahCA
See current levels for all 29 California lakes and reservoirs →
Add this gauge to your website
Run a marina, boat rental, guide service, or real-estate site on Millerton Lake? Put this free live-level widget on your page — just copy and paste the code: