Lake Travis water level678.9ftMSL678.9 feet above mean sea level

As of today, Lake Travis is at 678.9 feet above mean sea level — 96.4 percent of its conservation pool, about 2.1 feet below its full pool of 681 feet. The reading refreshes about every 10 minutes from the LCRA Hydromet gauge at Mansfield Dam.

Today the lake is at 678.9 feet — about 96.4 percent of its conservation pool. Lake Travis is rarely exactly "full": full pool is 681 feet, and as a flood-control reservoir it spends most of its life somewhere below that, rising fast after big Hill Country rains and easing down through dry stretches.

Full (conservation) pool is 681 feet above mean sea level. At that elevation the reservoir holds its full conservation capacity; anything above it is flood storage, up to the 721.4-foot top of flood pool.

Lake Travis is a flood-control and water-supply reservoir on the Colorado River. Levels rise with rainfall and inflows from the Highland Lakes upstream, and fall during dry spells, downstream water releases at Mansfield Dam, and evaporation. It is drawn down far more than a constant-level lake.

Our elevation and percent-of-full-pool figures refresh roughly every 10 minutes from the LCRA Hydromet gauge at Mansfield Dam, and each reading is timestamped so you can see how current it is.

It is the share of the reservoir's conservation storage that is currently full, measured by volume rather than elevation. Because the lake is bowl-shaped, a foot of elevation near the bottom holds far less water than a foot near the top, so the percentage and the elevation do not move in lockstep.

Elevation and flood operations come from LCRA Hydromet at Mansfield Dam; conservation-pool volume and long-term history are from the Texas Water Development Board. Weather forecasts and alerts are from NOAA / National Weather Service, with current conditions from an on-site weather station.

Lake Travis routinely sits below full pool — that is by design, since it is kept ready to absorb flood inflows. Sustained drops below the conservation range reflect drought, while rapid rises follow heavy rain in the watershed. The multi-year chart on this page shows the trend in context.

It tilts the odds, but it is not enough on its own. El Niño winters lean wetter in the Hill Country and La Niña years lean dry — and La Niña is the more reliable signal: Lake Travis fell in about 71 percent of La Niña years, including the 1950s drought of record, the record-dry 2011 water year, and the 2022–2024 drawdown. But the lake actually refills from a few big floods, which can land in any year — even the catastrophic July 2025 flood came during a La Niña. So El Niño improves the odds of a wet year without guaranteeing a refill. See the El Niño & flood-story page for the full picture since 1950.