Colorado surface water · water year 2026

Where the water sits,
and where it combines

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. Enter your ZIP to trace your own tap, or watch the 2026 drought arrive over the water year.

reading as of 22 Jul 2026
storage KAF · flow cfs
normals NRCS 1991–2020
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How to read it

Solid glass — a measured, dated reading
Dashed glass — estimated from its basin's % of median
Bone tick — where the level normally sits today
Dashed line — a tunnel carrying water under the Divide
▼ marker — the glass is being drawn down to feed the river

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.

The seven colours

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.

Data & live readings

  • Colorado DWR telemetry (CDSS) dwr.state.co.us · live storage for 27 reservoirs, fetched on load
  • USGS NWIS waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/ · live discharge at 18 gages, fetched on load
  • Denver Water · USBR · Northern Water published storage in the baseline snapshot
  • NRCS Water Supply Outlook monthly basin % of 1991–2020 median — the timeline's backbone
Live readings load automatically; the snapshot stands in wherever they can't.

Want the numbers themselves? The full dataset is on the data page as downloadable CSVs.