Kinneret Drops 3.0 cm to -213.675 m, Sitting 0.68 m Below the Lower Red Line

Lake Kinneret slipped another 3.0 centimeters this week, settling at -213.675 meters below sea level on 2026-10-15, according to Israel Water Authority data. The drop keeps the lake beneath its lower red line, the threshold that marks the point at which salinity rises and the ecosystem begins to suffer.

The lake is now 4.88 meters from full capacity, defined by the upper red line at 208.80 meters below sea level. On the other side of the ledger, it sits 0.68 meters below the lower red line of 213 meters.

The weekly dip is part of a steadier decline. Over the past 30 days the level has fallen 21.5 centimeters, from -213.460 meters on 2026-09-15. Measured against the same point twelve months ago, when the lake stood at -213.185 meters, it is down 49.0 centimeters.

Readings from the same week in recent years show where the lake has been. It stood at -213.21 m in 2025, -211.02 m in 2024, -211.43 m in 2023, -210.16 m in 2022 and -210.41 m in 2021.

Where this sits in the record

The Israel Water Authority publishes the series on the national open-data portal, running from 1966-09-01 to 2026-10-15 and totalling 11,364 readings. The highest level on file is -208.20 meters, recorded on 1969-01-27. The lowest is -214.87 meters, recorded on 2001-11-25. Today's reading falls between those extremes, but on the wrong side of the lower red line, 0.68 meters beneath it.

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. 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 on the lake bed itself: saline springs feed into the Kinneret from below, and as the volume of fresh water above them falls, salinity rises and the ecosystem deteriorates. Staying above this line is about protecting the quality of the water as much as its quantity.

Neither line is a natural feature. Both are policy, set to guide how the lake is used and protected, and the current reading places the Kinneret firmly in the zone where those restrictions apply.

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.