I am going down to the current river next week, floating friday and Saturday, and was looking at the Gage height above Akers, MO. It is currently reading 3.0 feet. Last week it was showing a little under 2.0. Can someone tell me what is normal and what is flood stage. When is the river closed? And when does it become dangerous for novice boaters.
I do not really want to drive 6 hr. at these gas prices to set at Round Springs and watch the river flooding the parking lot.
Thanks so much for any info you can give.
Re: Current River
For levels that the NPS considers flood see
http://www.nps.gov/ozar/levels.html
This page shows 4.0 for Akers gage is flood
If you go to the above link and click on Akers it will take you to the USGS stream gage site and show a graph of the river levels. Without additional rainfall, the river may be near 2.0 by next weekend.
Anything below about 2.5 should be fine for novice floaters. If in doubt, take a conservative route at bends in the river by staying to the inside. Watch for strainers or root-wads.
Have a good trip.
SYOTR, Dan
Go for it…
Very slight chance of rain in the coming week.
A very gradual warming trend in the coming week, with temps in low to mid 70s predicted for the coming weekend.
The weather will still be too cool for the mobs of weekend “river dorks”.
A good opportunity to go…
Have a good one!
BOB
Reading gages…
Pretty simple, actually, to get an idea of what’s “normal” for the river at that point for this time of year. If you go back and look at the graphs, you’ll see that there is also a graph of flow in cubic feet per second. On that graph, you’ll see a little triangle for each day. That triangle is the median flow for that day of all the years on record, and it’s a pretty good indication of what “normal” flow would be. As you can see comparing the two graphs, when the river level was 2.0 a few days ago, it was also flowing right about the level of those triangles, so that should tell you that 2.0 was about normal.
Generally, a rise of about a foot from “normal” on a typical Ozark stream will make the river faster, but still within floatable levels. Much over a foot and things start getting a little dicey. So 3.0 would probably still be doable, but 4.0 is getting dangerous for the inexperienced paddler, which is why the Park Service closes the river at that level. It wouldn’t really be “flooded”…a rise of two feet is still well within the river’s banks. It takes probably a 5 foot or more rise to get the Current up “into the parking lots”. But definitely the margin for error is MUCH less in a rise of more than a foot or so.
Thanks all
Your responses were a great help