Today’s water budget · Lake Travis

Up or down? Down 0.82 ft over the last 7 days (LCRA lake level).

Where the water came from and where it went, at today’s rates. Dam releases and withdrawals have no complete public feed, so they land in the leftover line, which is inferred from the other lines.

River inflowmeasured
+375 af/day≈ +0.26 in/day on the lake
USGS and LCRA gauges, at current rates
Evaporationmodeled
−317 af/day≈ −0.22 in/day on the lake
Estimate from long-term averages over 17,578 surveyed acres (TWDB)
Everything leaving that we can’t meter (releases, withdrawals)inferred
−2,117 af/day≈ −1.45 in/day on the lake
What’s left once the other rows and the storage change are counted

=Storage changeinferred
−2,059 af/day≈ −1.41 in/day on the lake
The lake's level change over the last 7 days (−0.82 ft, LCRA), as a daily average, × 17,578 surveyed acres (TWDB)

The lines above add up to the storage change: what the lake gained or lost. Inflow is current; storage is the average over the last 7 days, so the leftover also absorbs any change in pace over that time.

That leftover is about 1,067 cfs leaving the lake, mostly dam releases and withdrawals, plus whatever the upstream gauges missed.

Where it’s going

Colorado River below the damsmeasured
USGS gauge at Austin
514 af/day≈ 259 cfs
Evaporationmodeled
estimate from long-term averages
317 af/day≈ 160 cfs
Withdrawals and other unmetered waterinferred
the leftover from the budget above
1,603 af/day≈ 808 cfs

Colorado River below the dams (USGS gauge at Austin) is measured downstream of the dam and stands in for releases. The withdrawals line is the budget’s leftover: city intakes, ungauged runoff and estimation error. The lines can overlap, so treat the split as approximate.

River flow toward the lake now

Swipe sideways to follow the river to the lake →

SteadyReceding · high water draining downOn the rise · climbing right nowInbound wave · big rise upstreamFlooding · NWS, by river heightNo current readingRising or falling is judged from each gauge’s last 48 hours, scaled to its river. Dot speed follows the flow. NWS flood status comes from river height and outranks direction.

Streamflow at the 4 river gauges (USGS or LCRA, whichever is newer), plus yesterday's average dam releases (LCRA). Labels are gauge readings in cfs. Line width isn’t to scale. The storage line above shows whether Travis is up or down.

How this is computed

Inflow converts current streamflow at the gauged tributaries (USGS and LCRA) to acre-feet per day (1 cfs ≈ 1.9835 af/day). Evaporation uses long-term monthly averages for the region over today’s lake surface. That surface area is TWDB’s daily survey where published, otherwise estimated from storage. With no storage reading, evaporation isn’t estimated. Inches on the lake divides each volume by that same surface area, so an inch takes less water when the lake is low and narrow than when it’s full and wide. Storage change is the lake’s level change (LCRA) times that surface area, averaged per day over the last day for a once-a-day feed, otherwise over the last seven days. The leftover is what it takes to make the lines add up. It lumps together dam releases, withdrawals, and ungauged runoff, which can’t be split without data the operator doesn’t publish.

All inputs are provisional. This page is an estimate, not an official accounting.