Fishing Lake — Live Water Watch

Fishing Lake (05MB013) — Water Security Agency readings, collected & charted by Kruel.Ai every 15 min. WSA source ↗

Each bar is that year's highest level, gauge 05MB013. Blue = measured — every year from 1964 to 2023 (Water Survey of Canada daily records), plus 2026 so far, all measured the same way so the years compare fairly. Grey (1910–1963) = reconstructed, not measured: the gauge did not exist yet, so these come from Figure 3 of the Water Security Agency's Agricultural Drainage Impacts on Fishing and Waldsea Lakes (November 2008), read off the published chart. Trust the shape and the ranking, not a single year to the centimetre.

A correction, made 5 August 2026. This caption used to say the grey years had been "checked against the real gauge" and agreed to about 12 cm. That was misleading and we have removed it. Having now read the source report, we know its simulated levels were adjusted to closely match the observed water levels from the mid-1960s on — so the curve was fitted to the very gauge record we were checking it against. The agreement was guaranteed by construction. Our 12 cm figure only ever measured how faithfully we read the printed line off the page; it was never evidence that the 1910–1963 years are right. Those years rest on regional streamflow transferred to this watershed and cannot be verified against any measurement, because none exists. The report is also explicit that this series represents neither undrained conditions nor today's drainage, but "the increasing level of drainage since at least 1964".

The solid amber line is where the lake sits right now, drawn straight across the whole record — so you can read today against every year since 1910, not just against the last few.

The long view changes the story. The lake is high today — but it was nearly this high in the 1910s and 20s, then fell about four metres to its 1946 low before climbing back. This is a basin that swings, and it has swung this far before.

2026 edges past 2011 by about 2 mm — a record, but effectively a tie. 2024–25 are blank because the federal archive has not published them yet.

Two different "normals" are on this chart, and it matters which you read. The green band is where the lake has entered winter since the 2011 outlet channel — it is computed from October–November means over 2008–2023, so it describes today's regime, not history. The dashed grey line is the honest historical reference: the median level across the whole 1964–2010 record, 528.95 m, from 2,913 daily readings. The gap between the two is about a metre. Note where that line sits against the lake's natural spill elevation of 529.74 m — the height at which Fishing Lake overflows on its own: historically the lake sat below its own spill point most of the time, a genuinely closed basin that lost water only to evaporation. We deliberately do not draw a historical version of the green band, because the record cannot support one — only six years have usable October–November coverage, and a band built on that would be guesswork dressed as measurement.

Point forecast at the lake (Open-Meteo). Nearest official station: Wynyard AUT (~45 km). Strong winds from the W–NW & S–SW are what pile water onto the far shores.

Windy live map — switch overlays (wind, rain, radar, satellite) inside the panel. Open full Windy ↗

Water flows top to bottom — rain and runoff feed the lake through the arms at the top (only the rain landing on the lake itself is measured; every inflow creek lost its sensor decades ago), then about 130 km from Fishing Lake, down the chain of lakes, into the Whitesand and Assiniboine rivers, and across into Manitoba. Only the marked points carry a gauge; the six lakes between are not measured. Barely 8 m of drop over the first 22 km is why the water creeps east and the lake stays high for so long.