Where the numbers come from

Every figure on this site comes from a named public source. What each one feeds, how often we read it, and how fresh it is right now.

City of Cape Town: this week's dam levels

Feeds: Today's combined level and each dam's level, on every page.
How often: Read every morning and afternoon. The City updates its daily table most weekdays and its weekly table on Mondays.

Latest reading 05/11/2026 · Last read 05/11/2026

City of Cape Town open data

Feeds: Daily levels for every dam from 2000 to January 2026: the history behind every comparison, chart and Day Zero figure.
How often: Loaded once. Gaps in 2026 are filled from archived copies of the City's page (Internet Archive) and weekly figures from City reports.

Daily history to 29/01/2026

Open-Meteo historical weather

Feeds: Daily rain for central Cape Town from 2000, winter rain on Visualisations and Day Zero, and whether it's raining now.
How often: Read every morning. Raining now is checked every 15 minutes.

Latest day 05/11/2026 · Last read 06/11/2026

City of Cape Town: weekly water dashboard

Feeds: City-wide water use against the City's target, in TapOff.
How often: Entered by hand each week from the City's weekly dashboard, a PDF linked from its dam levels page.

Latest week 11/05/2026

City of Cape Town: water restrictions

Feeds: The restriction level, copied from the City's announcements with a link to each. Never worked out from dam levels.
How often: Updated when the City announces a change.

Current level since 01/11/2020

NOAA Oceanic Niño Index and British Antarctic Survey SAM index

Feeds: The El Niño or La Niña phase and the Southern Annular Mode for each winter, beside the 26-year chart on Visualisations.
How often: Refreshed by hand every few months.

Last refreshed 20/10/2026

If a source doesn't add up, we keep the last good reading rather than show a wrong one, and say how old it is. Where we have no reading, we show a dash.

Independent. Not affiliated with the City of Cape Town.

How we read the numbers

Help Cape Town keep an eye on its dams

Put today's dam level, the restriction level or a water-saving tip on your website or blog. It's free, takes one line of code and updates itself. Prefer to build your own? The same figures are open as JSON.

All it takes

<script src="https://www.waterdashboard.co.za/widget.js" data-variant="level" async></script>