Durham Reservoirs Dashboard
Little River Reservoir · Little River watershed · updated Aug 23, 11:07 AM ET
Source readings from USGS and the City of Durham are provisional and subject to revision. Every value is shown with the time it was observed.
30-day inflow & outflow
Cubic feet per second (cfs) on a shared axis. From USGS instantaneous values.
Reservoir elevation
Daily snapshots of the City of Durham's published elevation, stored by this dashboard. Points before 2026-07-19 were digitized from the City's 30-day chart image (±0.3 ft) and are excluded from trend calculations. Provisional.
Rainfall near Little River Reservoir
updated 4 hr ago- Treyburn · near Little River dam
- 0.08 in today
Source: Weather Underground personal weather stations (hobbyist gauges near or upstream of the reservoir — accuracy and siting vary). Daily totals reset at local midnight; today's bar is rain so far. Today's value is the mean across reporting stations.
What would it take to refill?
Little River Reservoir is 12.40 ft below full pool — at most 2218 million gallons (6808 acre-ft) of water to reach the spillway.
| To fill in… | Required net inflow | Equivalent | vs current 7-day avg |
|---|---|---|---|
| 7 days | 490 cfs | 3667 gal/s · 317 MGD | 145.8× (94× seasonal median) |
| 30 days | 114 cfs | 856 gal/s · 74 MGD | 34× (22× seasonal median) |
| 90 days | 38.1 cfs | 285 gal/s · 25 MGD | 11.3× (7× seasonal median) |
Upper bound. Computed as deficit × full-pool surface area (549 acres — City of Durham Parks & Recreation (549 acres at full)); the true volume is somewhat less because the reservoir narrows with depth. "Net inflow" means water accumulating in the lake — on top of downstream releases, municipal withdrawals, and evaporation — so the river itself must carry more than these figures. Sustained flow at these rates within the period would be sufficient to refill.
Recovery interpretation
Flows are monitored for Little River Reservoir, but its downstream gauge includes tributary flow, so direction is only reported from measured lake elevation.
Estimate only. Net surface flow (inflow − outflow) excludes municipal withdrawals, smaller tributaries, direct rainfall, evaporation, groundwater exchange, and travel-time between gauges. It is not an exact reservoir water balance.