Lake Travis rises 6-plus feet in 4 days

The Lower Colorado River Authority opened floodgates at Max Starcke Dam in Marble Falls on July 24 to move storm runoff downstream into Lake Travis. The floodgate operation was completed the next day. Photo by James Oakley
Lake Travis is up 6.77 feet as of 9 a.m. Friday, July 26, due to the abnormal summer flooding of the Llano River, which began Monday. The lake, which is also reservoir, is now at its highest level since October 2022, but it’s still not full.
The Llano River is a major tributary of the Colorado River watershed. It pours into Lake LBJ and, after passing through Wirtz Dam and Max Starcke Dam in Marble Falls, contributes to Lake Travis.
Lake Travis gained 6.77 feet between 7:30 p.m. Monday and 9 a.m. Friday. The rise began when massive amounts of water surged downstream from the western reaches of the Llano River watershed in Kimble, Edwards, Gillespie, Sutton, and Kerr counties.
The lake now sits at 641.25 feet above mean sea level, up from 634.48 msl on Monday. It is considered full at 681 msl. According to data collected from the Lower Colorado River Authority, this is the highest Travis has been since October 2022, when it was at 641.34 msl.
The reservoir has not been completely full since July 2019.
Lake Travis has gained 69,983 acre-feet of water since Monday—the equivalent to about half of the 140,000 acre-feet of water used by the city of Austin in a year, according to the LCRA. It is also roughly eight times the amount of water held in Lake Marble Falls.
As of Friday, the combined storage of Lake Buchanan, the other Highland Lakes reservoir, and Lake Travis was 58 percent, up from 54 percent on Monday.