About the River Gauges desk

The River Gauges desk reads the measuring instruments of the United States’ rivers, coasts and climate. River stage and flow come from the USGS National Water Information System, with the National Weather Service’s flood categories and forecast crests from the National Water Prediction Service. Tide and water-level stations are read from NOAA CO-OPS, offshore buoys from the National Data Buoy Center, and sea-ice and glacier measurements from the National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA.

The desk also carries the slow readings that rarely make headlines: the Atlantic overturning circulation from the RAPID array, ocean temperature at depth, drought outlooks from the NOAA Climate Prediction Center, and the monthly climate records published by NOAA, NASA and the Copernicus Climate Change Service, each allowed to state its own figure.

Every reading is labelled with its station, its agency and the time of observation. Missing or sentinel values are never shown as readings. A river crossing from one NWS flood category into another, or a forecast that it will, is what moves a gauge from this page to the network’s alert tiers.