Hell you didn't need to look at gauges to know it was gonna be blown out.
The Pineville gauge fools a lot of people. It's on Little Sugar which flows north out of AR.
The next gauge up is at Powell on the Big Sugar. Two totally different water sheds when it comes to rain.
You don't have a true Elk gauge until you get to Tiff City, which the Elk runs well south of, it's the Buffalo that runs near Tiff City, on the MO-OK border just up from Grand Lake.