The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 409 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

409

Values held

1907–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Middle Colorado-Elm 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 Colorado Rv nr Ballinger, TX

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1908–2024.

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	Colorado Rv nr Ballinger, TX (m³/s)
1908	663
1909	138
1911	518
1913	671
1915	382
1916	244
1918	362
1919	600
1921	428
1922	1,099
1923	864
1924	535
1925	592
1926	750
1928	920
1929	745
1930	1,192
1932	742
1933	133
1935	946
1936	2,135
1937	258
1938	597
1939	827
1940	617
1941	566
1942	157
1944	436
1945	714
1946	408
1947	600
1948	801
1949	464
1950	227
1951	297
1952	218
1953	997
1954	600
1955	558
1956	396
1957	765
1959	111
1960	360
1962	377
1963	193
1964	189
1965	334
1966	292
1967	108
1968	258
1969	139
1970	69.4
1971	188
1972	98.0
1973	63.1
1974	311
1976	52.7
1978	470
1979	86.6
1980	279
1981	213
1983	2.78
1984	44.2
1986	323
1988	18.7
1989	103
1990	345
1991	34.0
1992	174
1993	14.9
1994	81.8
1995	50.7
1996	138
1997	281
1998	63.7
1999	17.2
2000	270
2001	32.0
2002	11.9
2003	84.7
2005	91.7
2006	13.6
2007	179
2008	6.17
2009	3.17
2010	5.97
2012	286
2013	74.5
2014	36.5
2015	40.5
2016	49.3
2017	19.5
2018	56.1
2020	7.76
2021	26.1
2022	0.111
2023	21.4
2024	144

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	1908–2024
Completeness	83.8% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	19 separate periods inside 1908–2024 hold no value. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1908 and is not continuous from it: 117 years separate the first value from the last, and 84% 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 Colorado Rv nr Ballinger, TX, as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1953–2025.

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	Colorado Rv nr Ballinger, TX (mm)
1953	12.0
1954	18.0
1955	11.0
1956	6.00
1957	54.0
1958	4.00
1959	6.00
1960	5.00
1961	11.0
1962	10.0
1963	3.00
1964	3.00
1965	12.0
1966	10.0
1967	4.00
1968	6.00
1969	3.00
1970	1.00
1971	3.00
1972	2.00
1973	2.00
1974	7.00
1975	3.00
1976	1.00
1977	1.00
1978	2.00
1979	1.00
1980	4.00
1981	5.00
1982	6.00
1983	1.00
1984	1.00
1985	1.00
1986	16.0
1987	15.0
1988	5.00
1989	4.00
1990	5.00
1991	4.00
1992	8.00
1993	1.00
1994	2.00
1995	2.00
1996	7.00
1997	6.00
1998	3.00
1999	1.00
2000	2.00
2001	1.00
2002	1.00
2003	2.00
2004	2.00
2005	2.00
2006	0
2007	6.00
2008	1.00
2009	0
2010	0
2011	0
2012	1.00
2013	0
2014	1.00
2015	1.00
2016	1.00
2017	1.00
2018	8.00
2019	6.00
2020	1.00
2021	0
2022	0
2023	0
2024	1.00
2025	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	1953–2025
Completeness	100.0% of the periods in that span are held.
Continuity	Continuous: every year from 1953 to 2025 is held.
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 Middle Colorado-Elm and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
Colorado Rv nr Ballinger, TX	catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	265	1908–2026
Colorado Rv at Ballinger, TX	catchment area, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	144	1907–2026

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 — 12090101. 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
Colorado Rv nr Ballinger, TX	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
Colorado Rv at Ballinger, TX	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 2 of them, which makes it a profile, not indexed.

Information-gain signals held for this water body
Signal	Held	Counts
Gauges holding a real record	2	no
Years spanned	120	yes, 20 or more
Values held	409	no
Distinct measurements	4	yes, 2 or more
Publishers measuring it	1	no
Official identifiers	1	recorded, not counted

Use this data

Machine-readable JSON /api/v1/observations/by-subject/gauge-usgs-08126380.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), Middle Colorado-Elm gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-middle-colorado-elm/

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 Middle Colorado-Elm 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 confidence2024-11-08

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 08126380, 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.