The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 5,611 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.

3

Gauges

5,611

Values held

1894–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Madison 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 Madison River near West Yellowstone, MT

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1914–2025.

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	Madison River near West Yellowstone, MT (m³/s)
1914	39.6
1915	29.4
1916	50.1
1917	55.2
1919	31.4
1920	42.8
1921	40.8
1922	36.8
1923	36.0
1924	24.5
1925	34.5
1926	28.6
1927	50.1
1928	44.7
1929	37.7
1930	28.1
1931	25.5
1932	41.1
1933	32.8
1934	18.7
1935	30.0
1936	37.4
1937	22.1
1938	40.8
1939	26.9
1940	28.9
1941	27.6
1942	34.5
1943	59.2
1944	32.0
1945	30.9
1946	32.0
1947	39.1
1948	39.6
1949	36.2
1950	42.2
1951	47.0
1952	39.6
1953	47.0
1954	40.8
1955	32.8
1956	60.9
1957	37.4
1958	32.8
1959	33.4
1960	31.1
1961	33.4
1962	39.9
1963	37.4
1964	42.5
1965	47.3
1966	32.6
1967	59.7
1968	45.3
1969	37.9
1970	48.1
1971	58.0
1972	51.3
1973	39.6
1984	44.2
1985	36.8
1986	66.3
1990	25.7
1991	55.5
1992	29.4
1993	65.1
1994	33.4
1995	48.7
1996	79.9
1997	74.5
1998	42.5
1999	62.6
2000	42.5
2001	45.3
2002	30.6
2003	34.8
2004	25.7
2005	35.7
2006	41.1
2007	28.1
2008	48.4
2009	51.5
2010	46.7
2011	71.4
2012	34.3
2013	32.8
2014	44.7
2015	23.4
2016	22.7
2017	41.6
2018	55.5
2019	34.8
2020	29.2
2021	26.8
2022	73.1
2023	37.1
2024	26.0
2025	23.2

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	1914–2025
Completeness	87.5% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	3 separate periods inside 1914–2025 hold no value. The longest runs from 1974 to 1983 — 10 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1914 and is not continuous from it: 112 years separate the first value from the last, and 88% 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 Madison River near West Yellowstone, MT, as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1914–2025.

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	Madison River near West Yellowstone, MT (mm)
1914	502
1915	401
1916	495
1919	354
1920	405
1923	363
1924	317
1925	418
1926	351
1927	450
1928	411
1929	360
1930	331
1931	258
1932	322
1933	316
1934	259
1935	306
1936	321
1937	294
1938	360
1939	311
1940	282
1941	290
1942	308
1943	446
1944	355
1945	359
1946	378
1947	397
1948	360
1949	370
1950	415
1951	428
1952	439
1953	388
1954	395
1955	359
1956	443
1957	405
1958	340
1959	372
1960	337
1961	327
1962	401
1963	379
1964	390
1965	475
1966	386
1967	476
1968	456
1969	440
1970	430
1971	516
1972	496
1984	419
1985	399
1989	363
1990	348
1991	386
1992	337
1993	416
1994	367
1995	447
1996	550
1997	623
1998	487
1999	508
2000	420
2001	337
2002	338
2003	334
2004	335
2005	350
2006	376
2007	318
2008	400
2009	388
2010	340
2011	440
2012	397
2013	341
2014	391
2015	320
2016	306
2017	429
2018	465
2019	402
2020	370
2021	315
2022	336
2023	360
2024	316
2025	287

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	Derived Computed by Hydrionis
Period held	1914–2025
Completeness	83.9% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	4 separate periods inside 1914–2025 hold no value. The longest runs from 1973 to 1983 — 11 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1914 and is not continuous from it: 112 years separate the first value from the last, and 84% 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

The snow standing above this water

8 automated snow stations sit inside this drainage area, weighing the snowpack rather than measuring how deep it is.

774

Fullest snowpack recorded at Beaver Creek, in 1997 (mm of water)

266

Thinnest, in 1987 (mm of water)

April

Month the pack is usually at its fullest

June

Month the pack has gone by, in half of years

Peak snowpack at Beaver Creek

Water years 1967–2026. Each point is the fullest month of that snow season.

A water year runs October to September and is named for the year it ends, so the snow of one winter stays in one point. The value is the fullest month, not the fullest day: a pack that peaked sharply mid-month reads lower here than a single measurement taken at the right moment would.

View the data behind this chart

Underlying data
Period	Beaver Creek (mm)
1967	642
1968	664
1969	461
1970	603
1971	676
1972	563
1973	367
1974	742
1975	548
1976	543
1977	274
1978	560
1979	427
1980	425
1981	377
1982	660
1983	489
1984	513
1985	354
1986	537
1987	266
1988	359
1989	467
1990	386
1991	472
1992	399
1993	494
1994	308
1995	620
1996	545
1997	774
1998	467
1999	528
2000	388
2001	328
2002	445
2003	438
2004	427
2005	372
2006	573
2007	347
2008	513
2009	561
2010	342
2011	654
2012	437
2013	460
2014	575
2015	320
2016	412
2017	480
2018	550
2019	491
2020	466
2021	339
2022	323
2023	550
2024	363
2025	383
2026	311

Read against the river

Beaver Creek and Madison River near West Yellowstone, MT both sit in this drainage area, and their records overlap by 58 years. That is the span the two have in common, not a count of years both actually hold — either record may have gaps inside it. The two are shown separately rather than on one axis: millimetres of stored water and cubic metres per second are not commensurable, and a difference between them would mean nothing.

Being in the same drainage area does not put the snowpack upstream of the gauge. A subbasin is an area, and snow on one tributary can join the river below a gauge on another — so a weak relationship here may say more about which tributary was measured than about the snow.

Every gauge Hydrionis holds within this area

Gauges within the Madison and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
Madison River near West Yellowstone, MT	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	325	1913–2026
Madison River near Three Forks MT	catchment area, annual maximum river flow	17	1894–2026
Gibbon River near West Yellowstone MT	catchment area, annual maximum river flow	14	1984–2026

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 — 10020007. 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
Madison River near West Yellowstone, MT	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
Madison River near Three Forks MT	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
Gibbon River near West Yellowstone MT	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	1	no
Years spanned	133	yes, 20 or more
Values held	5,611	yes, 1000 or more
Distinct measurements	6	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-06037500.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), Madison gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-madison/

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 Madison 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 confidence2025-05-12

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 06037500, 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.