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Arizona San Carlos Reservoir at Less Than 1 Percent Capacity After Low Snowpack and Releases
NASA satellite images from May 22, 2026, show the San Carlos Reservoir holding 389 acre-feet of water. The drop follows low snowpack and required releases, killing nearly all fish and prompting an indefinite closure. Newsweek reported the findings from the Earth Observatory.
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NASA’s Earth Observatory released a Landsat satellite image on May 22, 2026, showing Arizona’s San Carlos Reservoir at 389 acre-feet of water, less than 1 percent of capacity. The same reservoir stood at roughly 60 percent full in June 2023. Arizona officials stated that nearly the entire fish population died after water levels fell far enough to cause hypoxia.
The San Carlos Recreation and Wildlife Department closed the reservoir indefinitely earlier this month because of health risks from decomposing fish. The reservoir is fed by the San Carlos River and forms part of the Gila River system, which supplies farms, communities, and wildlife in New Mexico and Arizona.
Created by the Coolidge Dam for the San Carlos Irrigation Project, it can irrigate about 100,000 acres when full.
Newsweek reported that snowpack in the Gila River watershed reached only 2 percent of its historical median in 2026, producing April streamflow at 39 percent of normal. Mandatory releases for downstream agriculture further reduced stored water. The reservoir first filled in 1930.
Major fish kills also occurred in 1976, when roughly 5 million fish died, and in 2018. Recovery after the 1976 event took about five years. A NOAA seasonal outlook issued in May 2026 gave a 33 to 50 percent chance of above-average rainfall during the summer monsoon season.
By the end of 2025, 35.8 percent of the United States was in drought, with moderate to extreme conditions across the Southwest, Midwest, and parts of the East.
