The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 295 values from 2 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

295

Values held

1908–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Lower Niobrara huc8 subbasin

2 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 Niobrara River near Verdel, Nebr.

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1938–2025.

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	Niobrara River near Verdel, Nebr. (m³/s)
1938	283
1939	246
1940	167
1959	217
1960	1,104
1961	178
1962	725
1963	286
1964	813
1965	138
1966	453
1967	268
1968	191
1969	255
1970	143
1971	187
1972	179
1973	198
1974	105
1999	345
2000	131
2001	243
2002	107
2003	123
2004	193
2005	148
2006	148
2007	270
2008	351
2009	137
2010	966
2011	314
2012	156
2013	129
2014	217
2015	133
2016	232
2017	139
2018	178
2019	3,483
2020	439
2021	200
2022	158
2023	245
2024	396
2025	201

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	1938–2025
Completeness	52.3% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	2 separate periods inside 1938–2025 hold no value. The longest runs from 1975 to 1998 — 24 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1938 and is not continuous from it: 88 years separate the first value from the last, and 52% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Last read from the publisher	2026-08-31
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 Niobrara River Near Spencer, Nebr., as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1928–2001.

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 (0 events)

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	Niobrara River Near Spencer, Nebr. (mm)
1928	41.0
1929	38.0
1930	45.0
1931	37.0
1932	38.0
1933	36.0
1934	34.0
1935	38.0
1941	34.0
1942	46.0
1943	36.0
1944	48.0
1945	45.0
1946	42.0
1947	45.0
1948	37.0
1949	45.0
1950	52.0
1951	59.0
1952	54.0
1953	55.0
1954	51.0
1955	40.0
1956	40.0
1957	49.0
1958	46.0
1959	42.0
1960	50.0
1961	42.0
1962	66.0
1963	48.0
1964	41.0
1965	44.0
1966	44.0
1967	42.0
1968	43.0
1969	41.0
1970	38.0
1971	42.0
1972	45.0
1973	48.0
1974	40.0
1975	37.0
1976	34.0
1977	49.0
1978	48.0
1979	44.0
1980	39.0
1981	38.0
1982	47.0
1983	58.0
1984	62.0
1985	44.0
1986	57.0
1987	54.0
1988	55.0
1989	39.0
1990	43.0
1991	47.0
1992	47.0
1993	56.0
1994	50.0
1995	67.0
1996	60.0
1997	63.0
1998	60.0
1999	59.0
2000	47.0
2001	56.0

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	1928–2001
Completeness	93.2% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	One period inside 1928–2001 holds no value: 1936 to 1940, 5 years with no reading. It is drawn as a break in the line and is never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1928 and is not continuous from it: 74 years separate the first value from the last, and 93% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Last read from the publisher	2026-08-24
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 Lower Niobrara and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
Niobrara River near Verdel, Nebr.	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow	151	1938–2026
Niobrara River Near Spencer, Nebr.	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow	144	1908–2026

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 — 10150007. 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
Niobrara River near Verdel, Nebr.	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	2026-08-26
Niobrara River Near Spencer, Nebr.	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	2026-08-26

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 3 of them, which makes it a full profile.

Information-gain signals held for this water body
Signal	Held	Counts
Gauges holding a real record	2	no
Years spanned	119	yes, 20 or more
Values held	295	no
Distinct measurements	4	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-06465500.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), Lower Niobrara gauge records, accessed 2026-09-02, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-lower-niobrara/

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 Lower Niobrara 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 confidence2025-05-19

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 06465500, 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 31 August 2026.