Kinneret Drops 6 cm to -213.470 m, Sinking 0.47 m Below the Lower Red Line

Lake Kinneret fell 6.0 centimeters this week, reaching -213.470 meters below sea level on 2026-09-17, according to Israel Water Authority data.

The lake now stands 4.67 meters from full capacity, defined by the upper red line at 208.80 meters below sea level. It is currently below the lower red line of 213 meters, the level at which salinity rises and the ecosystem begins to suffer.

Over the past 30 days the level has moved down 30.0 centimeters, from -213.170 meters on 2026-08-18.

Against the same point twelve months ago, when the lake stood at -212.940 meters, the level is down 53.0 centimeters.

For the same week in recent years, the level stood at -212.98 m in 2025, -210.78 m in 2024, -211.22 m in 2023, -209.90 m in 2022, -210.24 m in 2021.

Where this sits in the record

The series published by the Israel Water Authority on the national open-data portal runs from 1966-09-01 to 2026-09-17, 11,334 readings in all. The highest level in it is -208.20 meters, recorded on 1969-01-27; the lowest is -214.87 meters, on 2001-11-25. Today's reading sits between them, 0.47 meters below the lower red line.

What the red lines mean

Israel manages the Kinneret between two administrative thresholds. The upper red line, 208.80 meters below sea level, is the point at which the lake is considered full and the Degania dam is opened to prevent flooding around the shore. The lower red line, 213 meters below sea level, is the point below which pumping is restricted: salinity from the saline springs on the lake bed rises as the volume of fresh water above them falls, and the ecosystem deteriorates. Neither line is a natural feature. Both are policy.

The full daily series, with charts back to 1966, is on the Israel.com Kinneret water level tracker, and the raw dataset is published by the Water Authority through data.gov.il.