Combined water flow?

[moguy1973]

So I was looking at the CFS levels on the Meramec on the USGS website and something doesn't seem to calculate out right.  There is 61k CFS showing on the Pacific gauge and there are several other creeks flowing in to the river between there and the Big River, namely the LaBarque and the Fox, and then you have the Big River that is adding an additional 61k CFS to the Meramec according to the Byrnesville gauge. The Eureka gauge is only showing 94k CFS.  Wouldn't you think with the combined flows from both the Meramec and the Big dumping into it be more like 120k CFS at Eureka?  I'm guessing the river is spreading out downstream from the Big and slowing the flow down some?

 

[KLiK]

Great observation! I might of learned me something today!

I'm thinking there's several factors at play such as, elevation, slope, resistance of terrain, depth and width are a few that come to mind.  When you look at those reference points on a map there's quite a bit of distance between them for those factors to have an effect.  Another thought is where the rivers converge the rate of flow is probably slowed due to the waters merging with one another.  

Link to map I observed:

https://maps.waterdata.usgs.gov/mapper/nwisquery.html?URL=https://waterdata.usgs.gov/mo/nwis/current?type=flow&group_key=county_cd&site_no_name_select=siteno&format=sitefile_output&sitefile_output_format=xml&column_name=agency_cd&column_name=site_no&column_name=station_nm&column_name=site_tp_cd&column_name=dec_lat_va&column_name=dec_long_va&column_name=agency_use_cd

 

While processing all this another question came to mind, how much water depth would there be if inflow rate was less than the outflow? Seems like the river would go dry if that was the case.