The Driftless Area — River Levels & Flows

Spring creeks through the unglaciated coulees of Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota. Big Buoy shows live USGS river gauges across WI, IA, MN, with stage, flow and a 7-day trend for each, plus National Weather Service flood categories where they are published.

About The Driftless Area

The last glaciation went around this corner of the upper Midwest rather than over it, leaving steep valleys and cold groundwater where the surrounding country was flattened. The result is several thousand miles of limestone spring creek — small, cold and stable, fed from below rather than by runoff. That stability is the point for an angler: these streams stay fishable in heat that shuts down freestone water, and they clear faster after rain than their size suggests.

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.