Lake Ontario Tributaries — River Levels & Flows

The Salmon River, the Genesee, the Oswego and the lower Niagara. 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 Lake Ontario Tributaries

Lake Ontario’s tributaries carry lake-run fish a long way inland, and they differ from one another more than Erie’s do. The Salmon River at Pineville is the best known and the least weather-driven of them: its flow is set by reservoir releases upstream, so it can change on a schedule while the sky stays clear, and a reading there reflects a decision as much as the weather. The Genesee, the Oswego and the Black are large rivers with long memories — they rise slowly and stay up — while Oak Orchard, Eighteenmile, Sandy Creek and Irondequoit are small enough to answer a single storm. The lower Niagara is here because that is how it is fished: as Lake Ontario water below the falls rather than as part of Erie. Its gauges report level only and not flow, which on a river that size is the number that means something. Several gauges in the list sit far up the Finger Lakes and Oneida drainage, which reaches the lake through the Oswego. They belong to the basin and are a long way from the shore — read them as the headwaters they are.

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.