River guage app

[grizwilson]

18 hours ago, Flysmallie said:

I don't know if it's available for Android but I use RiverData. It's just pulling the info from USGS but makes it simple. 

Also use river data, do not think it works on android.  Have my 33 favorites, quick easy and has the discharge and medians etc.  do not have to scroll through every gauge in the state....... fast easy.  used river flows when I had a droid, it was pretty good, but one of the reasons I went back to apple. 

[Johnsfolly]

1 hour ago, grizwilson said:

Also use river data, do not think it works on android.  Have my 33 favorites, quick easy and has the discharge and medians etc.  do not have to scroll through every gauge in the state....... fast easy.  used river flows when I had a droid, it was pretty good, but one of the reasons I went back to apple. 

I just go directly through the USGS state map from my Android which is one of my bookmarks. Then click on the gage location.

[BilletHead]

9 hours ago, Johnsfolly said:

I just go directly through the USGS state map from my Android which is one of my bookmarks. Then click on the gage location.

             This plus Southwest power pool generation schedules where I am looking below a generation dam. 

[Al Agnew]

23 hours ago, Flysmallie said:

Because it’s quick and easy. All I need most of the time is the CFS. 3 small taps of the screen and I have what I need. Open the app. Click on favorites. Choose the gauge from my custom list. Quit making things so difficult. 

Umm...one click on Safari, one click on my bookmarked streamflow table, and I've got cfs and median cfs for EVERY gage in Missouri, all I have to do is scroll down the list until I get to the gage I'm interested in and read what it says.  I didn't have to make a custom list.  I think your way is more difficult than mine.

[Al Agnew]

15 hours ago, grizwilson said:

Also use river data, do not think it works on android.  Have my 33 favorites, quick easy and has the discharge and medians etc.  do not have to scroll through every gauge in the state....... fast easy.  used river flows when I had a droid, it was pretty good, but one of the reasons I went back to apple. 

It's not exactly like you have to scroll through every gage in the state.  They are listed by river system, always in the same order.  A flick of my finger gets me down the list to the river system where I know the gage is.  Of course, I've been using the gages since I found out they existed, so I know just about exactly where on the list a particular gage is.  I just did a little experiment...I wanted to get the cfs and median cfs on the Jacks Fork at Mountain View (Buck Hollow gage).  So I opened my Iphone, went to the clock and stopwatch, clicked start on the stopwatch.  Then I opened Safari, clicked on my bookmarked streamflow table, scrolled quickly down to where I knew that gage was on the list, and read it off...41.3 cfs right now, 41 cfs is median for today.  Flicked back to stopwatch and hit stop.  26 seconds.

The vast majority of the gages I use often are in the Meramec river system.  Most of the rest are in the White River basin (including the Jacks Fork).  Now if I had to check out the Elk River it might take a few more seconds for me to find it.

By the way, I've been spelling it "gage" because that's how it's spelled on the USGS site.  But "gauge" was what I always thought the correct spelling was.

[Flysmallie]

42 minutes ago, Al Agnew said:

Umm...one click on Safari, one click on my bookmarked streamflow table, and I've got cfs and median cfs for EVERY gage in Missouri, all I have to do is scroll down the list until I get to the gage I'm interested in and read what it says.  I didn't have to make a custom list.  I think your way is more difficult than mine.

Yeah you can't fathom anyone not agreeing with you. It's okay though. I won't hold it against you. PS. I don't have to scroll. 

[rumrunner]

Thanks for all of the great info everybody! 

[rumrunner]

I use both an app and the usgs. Just depends on what I'm looking for. The riverflows app comes up showing the cfs on my favorites for a quick look. If there is more to it I haven't figured it out. If I'm following a certain  gage that's all I need. 

[Al Agnew]

1 hour ago, rumrunner said:

I use both an app and the usgs. Just depends on what I'm looking for. The riverflows app comes up showing the cfs on my favorites for a quick look. If there is more to it I haven't figured it out. If I'm following a certain  gage that's all I need. 

There is a huge amount of info you can get from the USGS gages.  

1.  Exact location of the gage.

2.  Number of years of record on the gage.

3.  Record high and low flows for the given day.

4.  Present flow, and present gage height.

5.  Median flow for the date (a good approximation of normal flow, BUT you have to look at number 2 before you can evaluate how accurate it is for normal flow.  If the gage has only been recording for a few years, there aren't enough years represented to get a really accurate approximation of normal.  The gage probably has to have been in operation for 20 years or more for the median to be a really good approximation of normal.)

6.  75th percentile flow--the flow was lower than this number 75% of the years of record on this date.  It is not particularly useful, but may give you some kind of idea on the highest flow that would still be fishable.

7.  25th percentile flow--the flow was lower than this number only 25% of the years on record.  It give you an approximation of how low they river can get during a really dry period.

8.  Mean flow--this one I find the least useful so I ignore it.

9.  What the river has done the last seven days.  You can easily change the parameters to show what it has done for weeks, months, or years in the past.  You can also change it to show what the river was flowing on an exact date or a given period in the past.  For instance, I was planning a trip to the John Day River in Oregon a couple years ago, and was concerned about how the flows on that river translated to whether it would be high enough to float in a raft.  I'd been on the John Day back in 1988, and remembered what the river looked like that time.  I knew it would have been barely raft floatable during that trip, which was done in inflatable kayaks.  So I figured out the exact dates we had done it back then, and looked back at what the gage was showing on those dates.  It told me that the cfs number the river was flowing back then was probably about the minimum number we'd need to get a raft down it on our coming trip, which told us whether or not we would be able to use a raft when the time came or would have to use kayaks or canoes.  As it turned out, a look at the gage the day before we left for the trip told us we'd be able to use the raft.

10.  Current state/discharge ratings--this is a table that will tell the figures they use to convert the measured height in feet to flow in cubic feet per second.  Thus, if somebody tells you that in their experience River X is floatable at a minimum of 2.7 feet, you can convert that to what 2.7 feet is in cubic feet per second.

11.  The daily, monthly, and annual mean flows for every year of record.  In other words, you can look at a table that tells you the mean flow for every day of the year, or every month of the year, or every year on record.  I find this interesting to see how the "normal" flow varies from month to month or even from day to day during the month, and also to tell how the mean flow has varied over the history of the gage, with some years and decades being drier and flows less than other years or decades.

12.  Peak streamflow.  This is a graph of the highest floods of each year of record, and is interesting to see how many years had really big floods and how the trends look in whether big floods are getting more frequent (they are).

13.  Field measurements.  This is a table telling you exactly when personnel visited the gage site and actually measured the stream flow in order to make sure the gage was properly calibrated, and what they measured the flow to be and how well it corresponded to their conversion tables of gage height to streamflow.

14.  Some gages also give the precipitation that has happened recently, and some give you water temperatures.  I wish they all did, as those are very useful things to know (especially water temperature during the winter months).

So while most of us simply look at the level or flow, check the graph to tell what it's been doing the last few days, and maybe look at the median flow to tell how close it is to normal, there is a lot more to be learned from the gages, some of it useful in determining the character of the river, or the fishing, other info mostly just interesting to know.

[Flysmallie]

15 hours ago, Al Agnew said:

There is a huge amount of info you can get from the USGS gages.  I don't think anyone denies that. It's where my app gets the info. And while this info is all good, most of the time I just need to know the CFS and the app does that quickly. I already know what the rivers I'm usually on look like at any CFS so I just need some quick info. And with two touches to the screen of my iPhone I have that. It also offers other info as well. But if I am going someplace that I'm not familiar with, I occasionally go to their site.  But the app pulls a lot of that info too. 

 

1.  Exact location of the gage. The app has this. You can even click on a button and it will pull it up in your map app with the directions.

2.  Number of years of record on the gage. It has an Annual Peak Streamflow graph where you can kind of tell but it would be better to use the USGS site for research. 

3.  Record high and low flows for the given day. Nope

4.  Present flow, and present gage height. Yes

5.  Median flow for the date (a good approximation of normal flow, BUT you have to look at number 2 before you can evaluate how accurate it is for normal flow.  If the gage has only been recording for a few years, there aren't enough years represented to get a really accurate approximation of normal.  The gage probably has to have been in operation for 20 years or more for the median to be a really good approximation of normal.) Yes

6.  75th percentile flow--the flow was lower than this number 75% of the years of record on this date.  It is not particularly useful, but may give you some kind of idea on the highest flow that would still be fishable. No, but you just said is wasn't useful.

7.  25th percentile flow--the flow was lower than this number only 25% of the years on record.  It give you an approximation of how low they river can get during a really dry period. No

8.  Mean flow--this one I find the least useful so I ignore it. No

9.  What the river has done the last seven days.  You can easily change the parameters to show what it has done for weeks, months, or years in the past.  You can also change it to show what the river was flowing on an exact date or a given period in the past.  For instance, I was planning a trip to the John Day River in Oregon a couple years ago, and was concerned about how the flows on that river translated to whether it would be high enough to float in a raft.  I'd been on the John Day back in 1988, and remembered what the river looked like that time.  I knew it would have been barely raft floatable during that trip, which was done in inflatable kayaks.  So I figured out the exact dates we had done it back then, and looked back at what the gage was showing on those dates.  It told me that the cfs number the river was flowing back then was probably about the minimum number we'd need to get a raft down it on our coming trip, which told us whether or not we would be able to use a raft when the time came or would have to use kayaks or canoes.  As it turned out, a look at the gage the day before we left for the trip told us we'd be able to use the raft. Yes. But only shows the last 7 days. 

10.  Current state/discharge ratings--this is a table that will tell the figures they use to convert the measured height in feet to flow in cubic feet per second.  Thus, if somebody tells you that in their experience River X is floatable at a minimum of 2.7 feet, you can convert that to what 2.7 feet is in cubic feet per second. No

11.  The daily, monthly, and annual mean flows for every year of record.  In other words, you can look at a table that tells you the mean flow for every day of the year, or every month of the year, or every year on record.  I find this interesting to see how the "normal" flow varies from month to month or even from day to day during the month, and also to tell how the mean flow has varied over the history of the gage, with some years and decades being drier and flows less than other years or decades. No

12.  Peak streamflow.  This is a graph of the highest floods of each year of record, and is interesting to see how many years had really big floods and how the trends look in whether big floods are getting more frequent (they are). Yes and they do appear to be more frequent.

13.  Field measurements.  This is a table telling you exactly when personnel visited the gage site and actually measured the stream flow in order to make sure the gage was properly calibrated, and what they measured the flow to be and how well it corresponded to their conversion tables of gage height to streamflow. No

14.  Some gages also give the precipitation that has happened recently, and some give you water temperatures.  I wish they all did, as those are very useful things to know (especially water temperature during the winter months). The app has this but if that info is not available on USGS then it's not there on the app. Just shows zeros. It does have a link to the National Weather Service so you can quickly see the current weather and forecast for that gauge location. 

So while most of us simply look at the level or flow, check the graph to tell what it's been doing the last few days, and maybe look at the median flow to tell how close it is to normal, there is a lot more to be learned from the gages, some of it useful in determining the character of the river, or the fishing, other info mostly just interesting to know.

The USGS site is a wealth of information. I'm glad I had a good understanding of it before these apps were available. And I will acknowledge and thank Al for helping me to understand what I was reading from these gauges. I used to always just look at gauge height and that seemed to work. But as Al has suggested in the past I started paying more attention to CFS and it has been very beneficial to understanding the waters I float a lot and what to expect when I get there. Thank you for that Al. Now when my wife says lets go float I can open my app, check the 3 gauges that are close, and have a plan of where we are going in about 10 seconds.