Same Storms, Three Lakes
October's floods sent Lake Powell climbing. Lake Mead hit a new record low the same week. And the Great Salt Lake barely noticed. Here's why, and what it means for the winter ahead.
Salt Lake City — If you've seen the headlines about Lake Powell this fall, you could be forgiven for thinking Utah's water troubles just took a big turn for the better.
Late October storms, fed in part by the remnants of Hurricane Trudy, dumped heavy rain across the Four Corners. Rivers that feed Lake Powell ran far past their old records, and the lake climbed more than 10 feet in a single month.
But that same week, Lake Mead, just downstream, set a new all-time low. And the Great Salt Lake, the one sitting at the edge of the Wasatch Front, rose about two inches.
Same storms. Three very different results. Here's how they stack up.
Lake Powell
- Level
- About 3,532 ft (Oct. 27)
- October change
- Up more than 10 ft
- How full
- About 23%
- Trouble line
- About 42 ft above minimum power pool (3,490 ft)
Lake Mead
- Level
- 1,038.8 ft (Oct. 31)
- October change
- Hit 1,037.16 ft on Oct. 22, an all-time low; up about a foot since
- How full
- About 24%
- Trouble line
- About 190 ft below full pool
Great Salt Lake
- Level
- 4,189.9 ft (Oct. 30)
- October change
- Up 0.2 ft
- Record low
- 4,188.5 ft (Nov. 2022), just 1.4 ft below
- Trouble line
- 8 ft below the 4,198-ft minimum healthy level
Levels are the latest readings available as this story was prepared and change daily.
Lake Powell: A Phenomenal Month
Powell's surge came almost entirely from one direction. The storms parked over the San Juan, Animas, Piedra and Dolores river basins in southwest Colorado and the Four Corners, all of which drain into the lake. The San Juan alone supplied about a third of Powell's October inflow, compared with the roughly 13% it usually contributes. Overall, October inflow ran at about 152% of average.
The Salt Lake Tribune put the inflow at roughly 600,000 acre-feet, about twice what Jordanelle Reservoir holds. Gene Shawcroft, who chairs the Colorado River Authority of Utah, called the rise phenomenal for this time of year and said 10 feet will make a big difference. Then he added the caveat.
"Doesn't solve the problem by any stretch of the imagination."
— Gene Shawcroft, Colorado River Authority of Utah
The numbers back him up. Even after the jump, Powell is only about a quarter full and sits roughly 180 feet below full pool, which it last reached in 1983. A National Weather Service hydrologist described the gain as a welcome start to the new water year, but small against what the lake has lost. And the river's main engine, the upper Colorado headwaters, delivered only about 64% of its usual October flow. The Bureau of Reclamation still expects Powell to run under low-water rules in 2027.
The storms also came at a cost closer to home. In Washington County, the city of Hurricane declared a local emergency after floodwaters damaged more than 100 homes.
Lake Mead: Still at the Bottom
Lake Mead sits downstream of Lake Powell, on the far side of Glen Canyon Dam and the Grand Canyon. That dam is the whole story. Rain that falls above it fills Powell. Mead only gets what the dam lets through, and the dam's releases held steady all month.
So while Powell was climbing, Mead fell to 1,037.16 feet on Oct. 22, the lowest it has been since the reservoir first filled. It has since edged up about a foot and a half, to 1,038.8 feet on Oct. 31, mostly because less water was being sent out of Hoover Dam and some local rain fell nearby. It remains about a quarter full and roughly 190 feet below the top.
The Great Salt Lake: A Different River System
Then there's our lake. On Oct. 30, the Great Salt Lake stood at 4,189.9 feet, up just two-tenths of a foot over the past month. That's only 1.4 feet above the record low of 4,188.5 feet set in November 2022, and about 8 feet short of the 4,198-foot level considered the bottom of the healthy range, a mark the lake hasn't reached since 2012.
The October storms didn't help for a simple reason: they fell in the wrong place. The Great Salt Lake doesn't drain into the Colorado River system at all. It's a terminal lake, with no outlet, fed by the Bear, Weber and Jordan rivers out of the mountains along the Wasatch Front and northern Utah. When those mountains get a big winter, the lake rises in spring. When they don't, it doesn't.
And unlike Powell and Mead, no dam decides how much water the Great Salt Lake gets. It receives whatever snowmelt is left after farms, cities and the rest of us take our share upstream.
What Happens Next
State officials are cautiously hopeful about this fall. Joel Ferry, executive director of the Utah Department of Natural Resources, has credited Utahns' conservation with keeping the lake off a new record low in 2026, and he's said the state is prepared to lease water and close the berm in the railroad causeway around the 4,190-foot mark, which is about where the lake sits now.
Next year is the worry. Ferry has said a new record low in 2027 would be "unavoidable" if Utah gets another record-dry winter like the last one.
The long-term math is tougher still. BYU ecology professor Ben Abbott has estimated the lake needs about 1 million more acre-feet of water a year to reach a healthy 4,198 feet by 2034. Current conservation efforts deliver an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 acre-feet.
What to Watch This Winter
For Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the number that matters most is snowpack in the Rocky Mountain headwaters of the Colorado River in Colorado and Wyoming. October's floods were a good start, but a single storm can't replace a big winter.
For the Great Salt Lake, keep your eyes closer to home. The snow that falls this winter in the Wasatch, the Uintas and the mountains of northern Utah, and how much of its spring runoff actually reaches the lake, will decide whether 2027 brings recovery or a new record low.
Lake Powell got a gift this fall. The Great Salt Lake is still waiting for one, and it's going to have to come from our own mountains.
- KSL.com: "Lake Powell gained more than 10 feet this month" (Oct. 27, 2026); "Great Salt Lake not expected to hit new low in 2026" (Aug. 12, 2026)
- The Salt Lake Tribune: Lake Powell's October rise (Oct. 26, 2026)
- Kiowa County Press: What the Four Corners flood did, and did not do, for the Colorado River (Oct. 2026)
- Western Water: "Did recent floods save the Colorado River?" (Oct. 30, 2026)
- U.S. Bureau of Reclamation lake level data, via LakeLevelNow (Lake Mead, Oct. 31, 2026)
- USGS Great Salt Lake gauge data, via Great Salt Lake HydroMap (Oct. 30, 2026)
How this story was made: Mountain & Main uses AI tools to assist with research and drafting. Every story is reviewed and edited by our editorial team, and all quotes and figures come from the sources cited.
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