Kinneret Drops 5.5 cm to -213.615 m, Sinking 0.62 m Below the Lower Red Line

Lake Kinneret fell another 5.5 centimeters this week, settling at -213.615 meters below sea level on 2026-10-03, according to Israel Water Authority data. The latest decline keeps the lake firmly beneath its lower red line, the level at which salinity rises and the ecosystem begins to suffer.

At its current level, the lake sits 4.81 meters short of full capacity, which is defined by the upper red line at 208.80 meters below sea level. On the other side of the ledger, it remains below the lower red line of 213 meters below sea level.

The weekly drop is part of a steadier slide. Over the past 30 days, the level has moved down 29.0 centimeters, from -213.325 meters on 2026-09-03. The longer view tells a similar story: twelve months ago, the lake stood at -213.085 meters, which means the level is now down 53.0 centimeters year on year.

Looking back at the same week in recent years puts this autumn's reading in context. The level stood at -213.13 m in 2025, -210.93 m in 2024, -211.37 m in 2023, -210.06 m in 2022 and -210.35 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 2026-10-03, comprising 11,356 readings in all. The highest level on file is -208.20 meters, recorded on 1969-01-27. The lowest is -214.87 meters, logged on 2001-11-25. Today's reading falls between those extremes, sitting 0.62 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, marks the point at which the lake is considered full. When it is reached, 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. The reason lies beneath the surface: saline springs on the lake bed feed salt into the water, and as the volume of fresh water above them falls, salinity rises and the ecosystem deteriorates. That is the zone the lake occupies today.

Neither line is a natural feature of the lake. Both are policy, set to balance the Kinneret's role as a water source against the need to protect it, and both serve as the yardsticks by which its health is publicly judged.

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