The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 896 values from 3 gauges within it. Discharge is a property of a gauge and its reach, not of this drainage area, so this page reports the network and its records rather than a single figure.

Gauges

896

Values held

1903–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Knife huc8 subbasin

3 monitoring points, positioned as the publisher records them.

Flood peaks, as measured

This gauge's flood record, as measured. Unlike a daily mean it is the discharge at the moment the river was highest, which is the figure flood frequency analysis is built on.

Largest measured flow of each year at KNIFE RIVER AT HAZEN, ND

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1930–2025.

Show relevant events (1 event)Shading marks when something was recorded, not what caused the line.

Published by the gauge's own operator from its sub-daily record; Hydrionis stores the figure rather than recomputing it. A year the gauge did not cover produces no value rather than a low one, and the gaps are stated below the chart. A peak is a property of this gauge and its reach: a larger flood upstream or downstream of it is not in this series.

What the shaded periods are (1 event)

A shaded period marks when something was recorded, not what caused the shape of the line. Where the two coincide, they coincided.

Documented record — A documented event, compiled from cited sources after it happened. The dates are as good as the record, which for older events can mean the month rather than the day.

Event	Type	Period	Standing	Authority
Hurricane Katrina water and sanitation collapse	Flood	2005-08-29 – 2005-09-30	Documented record	Compiled record

Not shown on this chart

The 1976 drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
The 2022 drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
Yorkshire drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
Cantareira water crisis, São Paulo — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
Cape Town Day Zero — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
European drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.

View the data behind this chart

Underlying data
Period	KNIFE RIVER AT HAZEN, ND (m³/s)
1930	86.9
1931	41.1
1932	36.8
1933	62.3
1938	214
1939	263
1940	32.6
1941	116
1942	88.3
1943	750
1944	227
1945	246
1946	99.1
1947	170
1948	200
1949	220
1950	643
1951	255
1952	572
1953	97.4
1954	110
1955	39.6
1956	188
1957	45.0
1958	99.1
1959	140
1960	205
1961	13.8
1962	109
1963	29.7
1964	146
1965	94.3
1966	1,000
1967	226
1968	51.0
1969	334
1970	232
1971	122
1972	538
1973	110
1974	38.2
1975	187
1976	85.0
1977	34.0
1978	311
1979	154
1980	45.9
1981	25.5
1982	297
1983	150
1984	70.8
1985	43.6
1986	249
1987	242
1988	12.7
1989	28.3
1990	54.9
1991	2.83
1992	10.5
1993	144
1994	63.7
1995	167
1996	167
1997	580
1998	31.1
1999	127
2000	32.6
2001	143
2002	39.4
2003	136
2004	150
2005	47.3
2006	13.0
2007	65.1
2008	4.19
2009	776
2010	187
2011	194
2012	16.6
2013	145
2014	185
2015	60.0
2016	21.5
2017	54.1
2018	116
2019	258
2020	68.8
2021	21.9
2022	55.5
2023	314
2024	41.3
2025	43.9

About this series

Everything below is a property of the data rather than a rating of it. There is deliberately no single confidence score: how much a gap matters depends on what you are about to do with the series, and only you know that.

Source	United States Geological Survey — National Water Information System · US Government work — public domain
How the values came to exist	Measured
Period held	1930–2025
Completeness	95.8% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	One period inside 1930–2025 holds no value: 1934 to 1937, 4 years with no reading. It is drawn as a break in the line and is never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1930 and is not continuous from it: 96 years separate the first value from the last, and 96% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Last read from the publisher	2026-10-01
Redistribution	Permitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reuse	Permitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
Methodology	How this was produced

How much of the rain came back out

A discharge in cubic metres per second cannot be compared with anything: the larger number may only mean the larger catchment. Divided by the area draining to the gauge it becomes a depth of water over that land, which answers a question a reader already has — of the rain that fell here, how much came back out as river?

Water leaving the catchment above KNIFE RIVER NEAR GOLDEN VALLEY, ND, as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1904–2025.

Show relevant events (1 event)Shading marks when something was recorded, not what caused the line.

Computed by Hydrionis from the published annual mean flow and the catchment area the station's own publisher states. It is not a water balance: the difference between rainfall and runoff is not evaporation alone but also change in groundwater storage, water abstracted and taken elsewhere, and water imported by transfer schemes — which is why a catchment can yield more runoff than the rain that fell on it without anything being measured wrongly. A different area figure rescales every value here by the ratio between them.

What the shaded periods are (1 event)

A shaded period marks when something was recorded, not what caused the shape of the line. Where the two coincide, they coincided.

Documented record — A documented event, compiled from cited sources after it happened. The dates are as good as the record, which for older events can mean the month rather than the day.

Event	Type	Period	Standing	Authority
Hurricane Katrina water and sanitation collapse	Flood	2005-08-29 – 2005-09-30	Documented record	Compiled record

Not shown on this chart

The 1976 drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
The 2022 drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
Yorkshire drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
Cantareira water crisis, São Paulo — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
Cape Town Day Zero — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
European drought — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.

View the data behind this chart

Underlying data
Period	KNIFE RIVER NEAR GOLDEN VALLEY, ND (mm)
1904	30.0
1905	5.00
1908	14.0
1909	38.0
1910	24.0
1911	9.00
1912	56.0
1913	21.0
1914	36.0
1917	19.0
1918	37.0
1922	26.0
1923	43.0
1944	36.0
1945	42.0
1946	11.0
1947	46.0
1948	36.0
1949	37.0
1950	53.0
1951	41.0
1952	62.0
1953	12.0
1954	25.0
1955	9.00
1956	12.0
1957	11.0
1958	13.0
1959	21.0
1960	18.0
1961	2.00
1962	17.0
1963	10.0
1964	8.00
1965	30.0
1966	26.0
1967	45.0
1968	9.00
1969	39.0
1970	43.0
1971	38.0
1972	61.0
1973	22.0
1974	11.0
1975	48.0
1976	16.0
1977	16.0
1978	54.0
1979	34.0
1980	6.00
1981	5.00
1982	73.0
1983	26.0
1984	24.0
1985	7.00
1986	35.0
1987	34.0
1988	4.00
1989	8.00
1990	3.00
1991	2.00
1992	2.00
1993	15.0
1994	12.0
1995	16.0
1996	18.0
1997	40.0
1998	12.0
1999	26.0
2000	6.00
2001	24.0
2002	7.00
2003	15.0
2004	15.0
2005	13.0
2006	5.00
2007	6.00
2008	2.00
2009	58.0
2010	24.0
2011	62.0
2012	5.00
2013	36.0
2014	69.0
2015	30.0
2016	11.0
2017	10.0
2018	18.0
2019	38.0
2020	22.0
2021	5.00
2022	18.0
2023	38.0
2024	8.00
2025	11.0

About this series

Source	United States Geological Survey — National Water Information System · US Government work — public domain
How the values came to exist	Derived Computed by Hydrionis
Period held	1904–2025
Completeness	77.9% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	4 separate periods inside 1904–2025 hold no value. The longest runs from 1924 to 1943 — 20 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1904 and is not continuous from it: 122 years separate the first value from the last, and 78% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Inputs last read	2026-10-01 · when the records this was computed from were last read from their publishers
Calculation date	2026-08-24 · when the calculation method was last versioned, not a reading of any publisher
Redistribution	Permitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reuse	Permitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
Methodology	How this was produced

Every gauge Hydrionis holds within this area

Gauges within the Knife and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
KNIFE RIVER AT HAZEN, ND	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	311	1929–2026
KNIFE RIVER NEAR GOLDEN VALLEY, ND	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	309	1903–2026
SPRING CREEK AT ZAP, ND	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	276	1924–2026

How these gauges were attached to this water

Assigned by the publisher to a numbered basin Every gauge here is assigned to this drainage area by its own publisher, which issues the area an official code — 10130201. A drainage area is not a river: it contains the tributaries as well as the main channel, and a gauge in it may be on any of them.

What each gauge’s link to this water rests on
Gauge	Evidence	Established
KNIFE RIVER AT HAZEN, ND	Stated by the publisher — USGS site service, huc_cd field — https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/site/ ; named from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset 8-digit HU (Subbasin) layer — https://hydro.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/wbd/MapServer/4	2026-10-02
KNIFE RIVER NEAR GOLDEN VALLEY, ND	Stated by the publisher — USGS site service, huc_cd field — https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/site/ ; named from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset 8-digit HU (Subbasin) layer — https://hydro.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/wbd/MapServer/4	2026-10-02
SPRING CREEK AT ZAP, ND	Stated by the publisher — USGS site service, huc_cd field — https://waterservices.usgs.gov/nwis/site/ ; named from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset 8-digit HU (Subbasin) layer — https://hydro.nationalmap.gov/arcgis/rest/services/wbd/MapServer/4	2026-10-02

What this record holds

Hydrionis decides which waters get a page, and which of those are offered to search, from what is actually held rather than from how the page reads. Five signals are counted; this record has 4 of them, which makes it a full profile.

Information-gain signals held for this water body
Signal	Held	Counts
Gauges holding a real record	3	yes, 3 or more
Years spanned	124	yes, 20 or more
Values held	896	no
Distinct measurements	5	yes, 2 or more
Publishers measuring it	2	yes, 2 or more
Official identifiers	1	recorded, not counted

Use this data

Machine-readable JSON /api/v1/observations/by-subject/gauge-usgs-06340500.json
How to cite this, and who you must credit
How these figures were produced
Request this at a different scale, format or geography

No bulk download is offered here, which is a licence position rather than a product one: at least one contributing publisher does not permit redistribution. The values can be read on the page, cited, and pointed to at source.

Attribution and citation

Suggested citation for Hydrionis

Hydrionis (2026), Knife gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-knife/

Cite Hydrionis where you rely on values Hydrionis computed, on the method that produced them, or on the compilation itself. The underlying measurements remain the publishers’ and their attribution requirements apply to you directly.

Recommended, not required. Hydrionis does not claim rights over unmodified public data it relayed, and doing arithmetic on somebody else’s measurements does not make them Hydrionis’s. Cite the version and the access date: the Knife gauge records changes as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without both cannot be checked later. Full guidance is on cite and reuse.

None of the contributing licences requires attribution. Crediting the publishers is still good practice and they are listed above.

Where these figures come from

MeasuredHigh confidence2025-05-18

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 06340500, annual peak streamflow. Licence: Open.

Method: The instantaneous maximum discharge of each water year as published by USGS, dated to the day it occurred. One value per October-to-September water year; where the publisher lists both a systematic and a historic peak for a year, the larger is the annual maximum. Values the publisher marks as maximum daily averages are not held here, because they are not instantaneous peaks. Values marked as bounded rather than measured are held as censored observations carrying the bound. Cubic feet per second are converted to cubic metres per second and the publisher unit is recorded alongside.

Rating curves are extrapolated at extreme discharges, so the largest values in a peak series carry the largest measurement uncertainty. Data from the U.S. Geological Survey National Water Information System, a work of the United States government and therefore in the public domain.

Retrieved 1 October 2026.