Source: USGS Great Salt Lake Gauge Elevations (NWIS)

Summary

The Great Salt Lake's surface elevation is measured rather than asserted, and the USGS is the body that measures it. Two lake-stage gauges report it: site 10010000 — GREAT SALT LAKE AT SALTAIR BOAT HARBOR, UT, in the south arm — and site 10010100 — GREAT SALT LAKE NEAR SALINE, UT, in the north arm, above the railroad causeway that separates the two water bodies. Both publish parameter code 62614, Lake or reservoir water surface elevation above NGVD 1929, ft, through the National Water Information System.

The daily-value series at Saltair begins in 1847, which makes it one of the longest environmental records in the interior West and the only one that can settle an argument about whether the lake is rising or falling this year. Any page on this wiki that needs a lake level should cite this dataset with a site number, a parameter code, and a date instead of repeating a figure from a news story.

Useful Claims

• Two gauges, two arms, one parameter: 10010000 at Saltair Boat Harbor (south arm, Salt Lake County, 40.73133329, -112.2135569) and 10010100 near Saline (north arm, Box Elder County, 41.25521065, -112.496903), both reporting parameter 62614 in feet above the NGVD 1929 datum. The two arms are hydrologically separated by the causeway and do not read the same number.
• Fetched 2026-08-11: the south-arm gauge read 4190.5 feet at 13:45 MDT and the north-arm gauge read 4190.1 feet at 13:15 MDT. Both are flagged provisional.
• The lowest daily mean elevation in the Saltair record is 4188.5 feet, on 2022-11-07. This is the measured floor of the 2022 record low.
• The highest daily mean in the record is 4211.60 feet, reached 1986-06-03 and twice in the 1870s (1872-06-27 and 1873-07-16).
• The record opens 1847-10-18 at 4199.80 feet. Measured top to measured bottom, the lake has moved roughly 23 vertical feet across the record — on a lake this flat, that is the difference between the historic high stand and exposed lakebed across hundreds of square miles.
• Elevation is what this dataset carries. Surface area, volume, and salinity are not in it; they are derived from elevation through bathymetry, and a claim about area needs an elevation–area–capacity table, not this series alone.

Verbatim

Instantaneous values, from https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/?sites=10010000,10010100&parameterCd=62614&format=json retrieved 2026-08-11 (site name, then the latest value object exactly as returned):

"siteName":"GREAT SALT LAKE AT SALTAIR BOAT HARBOR, UT" ... "value":"4190.5","qualifiers":["P"],"dateTime":"2026-08-11T13:45:00.000-06:00"
"siteName":"GREAT SALT LAKE NEAR SALINE, UT" ... "value":"4190.1","qualifiers":["P"],"dateTime":"2026-08-11T13:15:00.000-06:00"
"variableName":"Lake or reservoir water surface elevation above NGVD 1929, ft"
"qualifierCode":"P","qualifierDescription":"Provisional data subject to revision."

Daily values for 10010000, from https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/dv/?sites=10010000&parameterCd=62614&startDT=1847-01-01&endDT=2026-08-11&format=rdb (tab-separated: agency, site, date, daily mean elevation in feet, approval code):

agency_cd	site_no	datetime	325949_62614_00003	325949_62614_00003_cd
USGS	10010000	1847-10-18	4199.80	A:e
USGS	10010000	1872-06-27	4211.60	A:e
USGS	10010000	1986-06-03	4211.60	A
USGS	10010000	2022-11-07	4188.5	A:e
USGS	10010000	2026-08-10	4190.4	P

Reliability Notes

Primary tier. This is a federal monitoring record the USGS created and maintains under its own mandate, published as a citable dataset (DOI 10.5066/F7P55KJN), and it is retrievable forever by site number and parameter code — which is why this page records the query rather than an archive snapshot.

Four limits matter when quoting it. Provisional versus approved: recent values carry the P flag and are subject to revision; the historical extremes above carry A (approved), and A:e marks an approved value that was estimated rather than directly recorded, which is normal for the nineteenth-century portion of the series. Two arms, two numbers: the north and south arms are separated by the causeway and differ by a few tenths of a foot to several feet depending on the year, so a lake level is meaningless without saying which gauge. Datum: these are feet above NGVD 1929, not NAVD 88; a figure from another source on a different datum is not comparable without conversion. Daily mean versus instantaneous: the extremes above are daily means, so a single-moment reading can dip below the record daily minimum without breaking it.

To re-check the current level:

curl -s "https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/iv/?sites=10010000&parameterCd=62614&format=rdb" | tail -2

Related Pages

• Great Salt Lake
• USGS Great Salt Lake Science
• Official Website: Great Salt Lake