The Catskills — River Levels & Flows

The birthplace of American fly fishing — the Beaverkill, Esopus and Schoharie. Big Buoy shows live USGS river gauges across NY, with stage, flow and a 7-day trend for each, plus National Weather Service flood categories where they are published.

About The Catskills

American fly fishing began on these streams, and the water still reads the way the literature describes it: freestone creeks off the Catskill high peaks, dropping into the Beaverkill, the Willowemoc and the Esopus. Local names carry Dutch settlement — a "kill" is a creek — which is why the gauge list reads East Kill, West Kill, Batavia Kill. Flow is rain-driven and drops quickly in summer, and several reaches sit below New York City water-supply reservoirs, where a release schedule matters as much as the weather.

How to read these gauges

Flow (discharge, in cubic feet per second) is comparable between gauges and is usually the better number for judging whether a river is up or down. Stage is the water height in feet above each gauge's own local datum, so it is local: the same 4 ft describes different rivers at two different gauges. Readings older than three times a gauge's reporting interval are shown as last reported rather than as current conditions, and a gauge that reports nothing is shown as not reported — never as zero.

Data: USGS National Water Information System. Flood categories: NOAA/National Weather Service.