Shenandoah National Park — River Levels & Flows

The Rapidan, the Moormans and the rivers draining the park. Big Buoy shows live USGS river gauges across VA, with stage, flow and a 7-day trend for each, plus National Weather Service flood categories where they are published.

About Shenandoah National Park

Shenandoah is a long ridge rather than a basin, and that shapes what a gauge here can tell you. The park’s own water is small — brook trout streams falling steeply off the Blue Ridge, most of them too small to carry a gauge at all. What IS measured is the rivers they feed: the Rapidan and the Moormans, which rise inside the boundary, and the North and South Forks of the Shenandoah and the Rivanna out in the valleys on either side. Read them as the drainage rather than as the park itself. They rise fast after a storm on the ridge and drop just as fast, which is the useful signal: a jump on the Rapidan means the small water above it has come up too. Park streams have their own regulations and seasonal considerations — check the National Park Service before you go.

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.