About LakeLevelNow
I'm Michael, an independent developer, and I run LakeLevelNow on my own. I build small, fast utility sites (they live on zovo.one), and I started this one because the lake-level pages I used before a trip were stale tables or a single reservoir's page. Check how full a lake is, see a 30-day trend, and get a straight answer on whether you can launch a boat, pulled straight from USGS, CDEC, Bureau of Reclamation and TWDB data. No account, no pop-ups, no essay before the gauge loads.
One job per site, done fast
Most lake-level sites are scraped tables that haven't been updated since the last flood season, or a single hobbyist page for one reservoir. I went the other way. Every lake pulls its own live gage (USGS for most, CDEC for California reservoirs, the Bureau of Reclamation for Mead, Mohave and Havasu, the Texas Water Development Board for Texas lakes without a USGS gage and TWDB percent full for the rest, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers CWMS data service for Corps, TVA and Alabama Power pools such as Texoma, Kentucky Lake and Smith Lake) so the number you see is the same one the operator reports, stamped with exactly when it was taken.
The "can I launch?" read turns a raw elevation into the thing you actually wanted to know: will the ramp be in the water this weekend. It's a level-based guide, not a guarantee. Always confirm the ramp with the operator before you go.
I build the whole site on my own and work on it full time. That's the only reason the data stays fresh and a request for a new lake actually gets read the same day.
What's live, and what isn't
Not every lake has a public real-time gage. A lake with no feed shows reference data only, never a made-up number, and stays out of search results until a gage reports. A reading only counts as live if it's within seven days. When an agency feed goes quiet, the page keeps the last reading with its date and says it is not today's, rather than passing it off as current.
So I'd rather hear what's wrong than guess at it. Wrong gage, mislabeled lake, a reservoir you'd like added: send it over. Small fixes usually ship the same week, and the bigger ideas go on a list I actually work through.
Keep it free, or get all of it
Every page here is free and stays free. There's no paywall on the water level, and there never will be. Two options if you want more than that.
- Your feature requests near the top of the queue
- Early access to tools still in testing
- No subscription, nothing to cancel
- Lifetime access to every tool on zovo.one, now and not-yet-shipped
- The zovo.one Chrome extension and BeLikeNative, included
- Your requests jump the queue · one payment, kept for good
Tools, code, and a real inbox
The tools, the membership, and the rest of what I make all live on zovo.one. The code I can share sits on GitHub. Got a question before you spend anything? Email me and a real person (me) writes back.
The best way to decide is to use the thing
Start with a lake you know. Check how full it is and whether you can launch. Come back if you want the rest.
Browse the lakes →