Colorado surface water · water year 2026
Reservoirs drawn as glasses of water, rivers as ribbons of colour, and the Continental Divide down the middle. A reservoir wears the colour of the water that fills it; the level in the glass is the reading. Drag the timeline to watch the 2026 drought arrive.
Each reservoir is a glass whose area is its total capacity — wide at the rim, narrow at the base, the way a canyon reservoir actually holds water. Fill colour is the water's source; the level is filled by area, so a half-full glass really is half-full. The % figure under each glass is condition against the 1991–2020 median.
Colours repeat only between rivers that can never mix, so within any one river every colour is unique and a blend is always traceable. Map rivers wear the same hues — mainstems fade toward the blend of everything they've collected. Braid mode on the flow view splits every ribbon into its true source shares.
Want the numbers themselves? The full dataset is on the data page as downloadable CSVs.