G'nade Trip Planning (Riddle > Hwy 28?)

[XP 590]

Once again, it drives me nuts when one person, who sees things one particular way, implies that is the best way for everyone else to see things.  I happen to KNOW exactly what 1.5 ft, or 3 ft, looks like on the specific gauges and locations on the few primary rivers I fish.  I know this from experience watching these specific gauges and fishing these spots regularly.  I have no idea what 4500 cfs at these spots because I never look at that reading, it's meaningless to me.  OBVIOUSLY, 3ft on one particular location, on one particular river, has no relation to 3ft on a different river, different location, don't need a PHD in hydrology to know that.  If a person is looking at a river they've never been to before and have no experience with, the CFS,  along with the median flow and depth may provide the needed information.

And that little orange triangle clearly labeled Median Daily Statistic is showing us the median daily statistic?  Wow, I'm flabbergasted.  Median being commonly defined as "denoting or relating to a value or quantity lying at the midpoint of a frequency distribution of observed values or quantities, such that there is an equal probability of falling above or below it.  

   Based on the individual viewers preferred personal viewpoint, and the date ranges you choose, there is an amazing amount of info available in those gauge readings. 

[Al Agnew]

Well, XP, you're not gonna get me to quit my crusade to get everybody talking cfs instead of feet.  My point is that, you said you don't know what 4500 cfs looks like because you never look at it.  Well...if you DID look at it, you'd not only know what it looks like on your particular stretch of river, but you'd know what it looks like anywhere else.  It's a measurement of the volume of water going past a given point.  I know what a riffle flowing 200 cfs looks like on Big River, Meramec River, James River, Crooked Creek in Arkansas, or some river I've never seen in Iowa.  You tell me that river is flowing 200 cfs, and it's flowing close to that median flow, and I'll know pretty much what that river looks like and how floatable or fishable it is...and I've never seen it before.  It's such a nice measurement that I can look at a riffle on any given river in the Ozarks when it's flowing at somewhere close to normal, and tell you within 10% one way or the other what that river is flowing in cfs right then.  The point is, cfs is a standardized measurement that translates from river to river, unlike gauge height in feet.  As such, if you deal in cfs, anybody who also deals in cfs, no matter what rivers they are familiar with, understands you.

As for the little triangles, most people don't seem to know what they signify or what that means.  I didn't assume they couldn't read, I'm saying that the median flow is a good gauge of what is normal for that time of year.  Just as the 75th percentile is a reasonable gauge of the highest flow that will still be floatable and fishable, and the 25th percentile is a good gauge of how low the river ordinarily gets during dry weather.  And of course, all those figures are in cfs.

I do use the feet graph as well.  It's quite useful when trying to picture how much a river has risen after a rain event.  Since few people float rivers that are several feet above normal, especially few anglers, we don't pay much attention to what a river that normally flows 200 cfs looks like when it's flowing 2000 cfs.  So when I see a river that's a thousand cfs above the median, I don't have as much of an idea what it's looking like, so I go to the feet graph, look at where it was in feet before the rise, and see how many feet it has risen.  Then I can picture what it looks like.  A 1000 cfs rise on the Meramec at Sullivan might only mean 1.5 feet, while on the upper Jacks Fork, it might mean a rise of three feet or more.  The Meramec will probably still be fishable with a one foot rise, the Jacks Fork won't.

So I use ALL the info on the site.  But the cfs is still the standardized measurement that translates from river to river.

[joeD]

So, how about a report from moturkey?

[moturkey]

 

So, how about a report from moturkey?

Had I braved the river yesterday, I likely wouldn't be here to respond today. I could have floated my street. Had fun watching the gauge jump though!