USGS Map

[wildtrout2]

It's hard to believe that almost a quarter of the state is showing orange and red dots already, especially after all of the rain we've gotten since last summer. I hope this doesn't become a trend.

 

[Acristickid]

I know in the western PA it’s still all frozen. There is close to a foot of snow in the ridges of the Laurel Highlands. Need a big warm up and maybe a warm rain , blowout then we can warm this water up.

 

[Maurice]

acristickid wrote:
I know in the western PA it’s still all frozen. There is close to a foot of snow in the ridges of the Laurel Highlands. Need a big warm up and maybe a warm rain , blowout then we can warm this water up.

Check back tomoro...and Monday git yer fishin in today boys.

 

[afishinado]

wildtrout2 wrote:
It's hard to believe that almost a quarter of the state is showing orange and red dots already, especially after all of the rain we've gotten since last summer. I hope this doesn't become a trend.

:roll:

Check this out > https://www.pennlive.com/news/2018/12/wettest-year-on-record-recorded-in-some-parts-of-pa.html

 

[troutbert]

There is very little relationship between rain last summer and stream flow now, 7 months later.

 

[afishinado]

troutbert wrote:
There is very little relationship between rain last summer and stream flow now, 7 months later.

Many of the bigger streams and certainly the rivers have not even reached normal levels as of this date because the water table remains very high.

Plus as Mo pointed out, much of the state is locked up in ice and snow which has yet to melt.

The water table rises and lowers very slowly. You can go to the USGS site and track groundwater levels.

As an example check out Big Spring right now which had been running below normal for quite a while until this past year > https://waterdata.usgs.gov/pa/nwis/uv?site_no=01569460

Here is the ground water map >

https://groundwaterwatch.usgs.gov/ltn/StateMapLTN.asp?sc=42&a=1&d=1

 

[wildtrout2]

troutbert wrote:
There is very little relationship between rain last summer and stream flow now, 7 months later.

I mentioned the rain we've gotten SINCE last summer.

 

[CRB]

Its been high in low 20's lows single digits to minus digits since early February up her in the Northwestern part of the state.
Frost is about +38" in my back yard. And, Lake Erie is still over 80% frozen.

 

[Prospector]

I’m no expert on water tables but my basement sump pump seems to be working far harder this winter than I can remember. During February I commented to my wife that I might need to buy a new spare and swap it out before it fails. Where the water empties into my yard, it usually shows through the snow for 15 feet before it’s absorbed into the ground but about a week ago the tail was about 100 ft long.

 

[salmonoid]

If you look at a lot of the gauges, they were above normal a week ago. It was cold last week and little additional melt or runoff happened. I was in Perry County overnight in a cabin by Kansas Valley Run. It was flowing well enough, but not at spring freshet level by any means. The southern exposure of Tuscarora Mountain was almost devoid of snow in the lower elevations, but the northern exposure of Conococheague Mountain had up to a foot of snow on it. That made for fun getting into and out of the cabin we were staying at, especially in our CR-V with 8" of clearance. That snow is compacted, with an ice layer in there as well and will probably produce a couple of inches of runoff as it melts. And with the rain moving through overnight, that will hasten that change from orange to green to blue.

But it is a new year. There's no guarantee that the weather pattern from last year will hold this year. But little chance that last year's rain majorly impacts this year's surface flows, or that the current daily flow is a trend.

 

[poopdeck]

I check the river gauges everyday even when I'm not fishing. It's just become a habit. Seems to me that last years weather pattern has been continuing this year with rain every 3 or 4 days all winter.

 

[afishinado]

poopdeck wrote:
I check the river gauges everyday even when I'm not fishing. It's just become a habit. Seems to me that last years weather pattern has been continuing this year with rain every 3 or 4 days all winter.

^ I too check the USGS site every day and you aren't imagining that the streams and rivers have been running high this winter (Check 90 day precip map below). As well the summer and fall of 2018 were record breaking with regard to precipitation.

I also put up the USGS 120 day chart for Penns and Spring below, the very popular Central PA streams for trout anglers, to demonstrate how above normal the flow has been and is at this point. There is a note that the Penns gauge is out of service right now because of ice. In addition, the flow is inspected to increase in the near term given the meltdown of ice and snow with the predicted warmer weather.

The water table is still running high right now but there is no way to tell if the trend will continue or reverse. While small stream fishing benefited with all the high water this summer, fall and winter, it is my hope that flows drop back to more normal levels. That would benefit other fish that spawn in the spring, as well as anglers that love to wade and fish our rivers and bigger streams.

 

[PennKev]

wildtrout2 wrote:
It's hard to believe that almost a quarter of the state is showing orange and red dots already, especially after all of the rain we've gotten since last summer. I hope this doesn't become a trend.

The color of the dot's do not indicate high/low water or drought conditions per se. They are a ranking of flows as a percentile when compared to the average for the current day.

How is that different than indicating high/low or drought flows? Well, the dreaded orange and red dots indicates that flows are in the lowest 24% for the day. Even in a stream that averages 300cfs for the year, 250cfs may only be in the 24th percentile for today. This is particularly true of late winter through spring when high water events can skew the date's average flow well above what most consider good fishing conditions. For instance the average flow for the LJR for today's date is 700+ cfs. Over the decades of data gathering, the frequency and intensity of high water on any given waterway during this time of year causes what are otherwise nice, fishable flows, to misleadingly register as "low."

From my own usage of the USGS charts, the percentiles and associated colors only indicate recent trends, again particularly during this time of year due to the skewed averages. They really don't tell us much about the water table or anything like that. Just how much water ran off recently. Later in the warmer months when extended periods of wet weather become less likely, and the flows are more reliant on ground water, they are more indicative of drought.