Reading A River Gauge

[mic]

Does this mean the Big River at Irondale is running three times more volume then its max in 1997?

[Gavin]

That means its flooded...normal flow is represented by those little tan triangles.

[Wayne SW/MO]

That's what it looks like. The volume is so far out that there might be a problem with the transmission or the gauge also, unless you've had a lot of snow suddenly melted by rain? It looks like they have had some trouble with that unit. Look at Feb. 22.

[Guest]

Deleted

[mic]

50K... Holy cow, that is a lot of water. Was 1994, the year the Missouri was flooded from Iowa to St. Louis?

[Greasy B]

I usually look at the USGS Gages before and after each trip
to the river, doing so on a regular basses will allow you to get a pretty good feel
for both the behavior of the various stream basins and for the conditions you’ll
encounter. On Sunday the Little Piney Gage at Newburg was about 95 cfs. At Lane
Spring it was probably a third less, maybe 60 cfs. From what I could see 60 cfs
would be the minimum you would want to attempt a canoe float on the creek and a
pretty good level for angling. Today the creek is bank full and more than likely
the color of coffee with cream.

I am indebted to Al Agnew for teaching me how to
read and understand the USGS gages at a MSA banquet some years ago. Learning to
read the gages was without a doubt the single most useful skill I acquired toward
understanding hydrology and how it applies to everyday river conditions. I’m
not sure If Al has a post on this forum about it but if he did it would be
great if someone could dig it up.

[mic]

I figured it out. The all time high listed in the table is highest yearly Mean, not highest daily.

[Smalliebigs]

Um Mike I just drove over the bridge on the Big on HWY 67 at Cherokee landing and it was out of it's banks.....we had a ton of sleet and ice late last week and over an inch and a half of rain last night......and I'm tickled pink......I hope it keeps raining and snowing but we are out of the extreme drought conditions now down here for now.

[mic]

It would be nice if we could keep this one good rain a week going for awhile.

[Kelroy]

The 3050 figure represents the highest daily mean flow recorded on a Feb 26 over the last 47 years of record, which happened to be in 1997. Short answer, is that it was running about three times as much water as it was on Feb 26, 1997.

The negative spikes you see on the 23rd can be caused by small air leaks in the orifice line, aggravated by the shrinkage caused by cold weather. Sometimes ice forms in the line and causes positive spikes. Note that the graph is 'provisional data', when the hydrographer gets a chance, he will go in and delete such erroneous data, thus smoothing out the curve, before the data can be reviewed and the record marked as approved.

Al really gives some good tutorials, posted under 'So how low are the rivers?' and 'Reading streamflow data.' I'm always pleased to find out when folks use and appreciate our data product. ~K