Kinneret Drops Another 4.0 cm to -213.715 m, Sitting 0.72 m Below the Lower Red Line

Lake Kinneret slipped another 4.0 centimeters this week, settling at -213.715 meters below sea level on 2026-10-22, according to Israel Water Authority data. The decline keeps the lake on the wrong side of a key threshold: it now sits below the lower red line.

That leaves the lake 4.91 meters short of full capacity, which is defined by the upper red line at 208.80 meters below sea level. At the other end of the scale, the lower red line of 213 meters marks the level at which salinity rises and the ecosystem begins to suffer, and the Kinneret is currently beneath it.

The weekly drop is part of a steadier slide. Over the past 30 days the level has moved down 19.5 centimeters, from -213.520 meters on 2026-09-22. Measured against the same point twelve months ago, when the lake stood at -213.225 meters, the level is down 49.0 centimeters.

Looking back at the same week in recent years puts this autumn's reading in context. The level stood at -213.25 m in 2025, -211.10 m in 2024, -211.47 m in 2023, -210.22 m in 2022 and -210.46 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 2026-10-22, with 11,371 readings in all. The highest level on file is -208.20 meters, recorded on 1969-01-27. The lowest is -214.87 meters, on 2001-11-25. Today's reading falls between those extremes, but at 0.72 meters below the lower red line, it sits much closer to the historic low than to the high.

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. 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.

Neither line is a natural feature. Both are policy, drawn to balance the lake's role as a water source against the health of the lake itself.

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.