I was wrong when I wrote in April that Lake Mead would continue to set “lowest ever for this point in the year” records for all of 2014. As I write this, with a few hours left in October, Mead’s surface elevation is 1,082.79 feet above seal level. That is more than five whole inches above the last really dry year, 2010! (data here)

But don’t get too excited. There’s a one in ten chance that Lake Mead will drop into the low 1,060s by the summer of 2016, according to the Bureau of Reclamation (data here, in pdf). That’s still above the trouble point for Vegas, which starts to have difficulty getting its water out of the lake at 1,050. But Southern Nevada Water Authority managers worry about water quality impacts well before that point (see these pdf/slides for an April 2010 presentation by Todd Tietjen of the Southern Nevada Water Authority for more on the issues involved). Here’s a chart, though it stops in January 2016, before things get really scary. On the plus side, there’s more upside than downside in the range of possible outcomes here:

Lake Mead projected elevations, courtesy USBR