The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 360 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

360

Values held

1902–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Middle Des Moines 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 Des Moines River at Fort Dodge, IA

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1905–2025.

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	Des Moines River at Fort Dodge, IA (m³/s)
1905	183
1906	340
1914	185
1915	524
1916	337
1917	484
1918	323
1919	289
1920	402
1921	187
1922	212
1923	118
1924	94.0
1925	119
1926	113
1927	251
1947	963
1948	368
1949	262
1950	194
1951	631
1952	371
1953	251
1954	1,002
1955	194
1956	96.3
1957	125
1958	211
1959	274
1960	459
1961	580
1962	617
1963	198
1964	303
1965	1,008
1966	155
1967	357
1968	74.8
1969	651
1970	323
1971	360
1972	234
1973	368
1974	240
1975	345
1976	74.8
1977	99.7
1978	259
1979	629
1980	365
1981	374
1982	281
1983	555
1984	784
1985	227
1986	385
1988	117
1989	88.6
1990	405
1991	668
1992	314
1993	883
1994	532
1995	317
1996	278
1997	309
1998	309
1999	396
2000	246
2001	663
2002	126
2003	371
2004	425
2005	671
2006	314
2007	833
2008	974
2009	173
2010	1,042
2011	555
2012	147
2013	609
2014	872
2015	241
2017	411
2018	716
2019	895
2020	311
2021	56.6
2022	137
2023	360
2024	898
2025	413

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	1905–2025
Completeness	76.9% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	4 separate periods inside 1905–2025 hold no value. The longest runs from 1928 to 1946 — 19 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1905 and is not continuous from it: 121 years separate the first value from the last, and 77% 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 Des Moines River at Fort Dodge, IA, 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	Des Moines River at Fort Dodge, IA (mm)
1914	79.0
1915	263
1916	156
1917	128
1918	99.0
1919	183
1920	179
1921	106
1922	65.0
1923	38.0
1924	63.0
1925	38.0
1926	43.0
1947	159
1948	76.0
1949	91.0
1950	66.0
1951	288
1952	151
1953	106
1954	137
1955	46.0
1956	13.0
1957	28.0
1958	31.0
1959	50.0
1960	113
1961	106
1962	204
1963	85.0
1964	92.0
1965	243
1966	67.0
1967	62.0
1968	64.0
1969	256
1970	76.0
1971	137
1972	119
1973	243
1974	113
1975	112
1976	29.0
1977	19.0
1978	87.0
1979	322
1980	110
1981	90.0
1982	247
1983	400
1984	383
1985	156
1986	308
1987	102
1988	53.0
1989	21.0
1990	71.0
1991	287
1992	276
1993	623
1994	220
1995	268
1996	156
1997	210
1998	202
1999	227
2000	55.0
2001	287
2002	82.0
2003	128
2004	165
2005	214
2006	185
2007	296
2008	229
2009	139
2010	464
2011	314
2012	66.0
2013	157
2014	172
2015	223
2016	363
2017	248
2018	587
2019	508
2020	219
2021	59.0
2022	83.0
2023	124
2024	308
2025	195

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	1914–2025
Completeness	82.1% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	One period inside 1914–2025 holds no value: 1927 to 1946, 20 years with no reading. It is drawn as a break in the line and is 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 82% 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 Middle Des Moines and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
Des Moines River at Fort Dodge, IA	catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	280	1905–2026
Des Moines River at 2nd Avenue at Des Moines, IA	catchment area, annual maximum river flow	80	1902–2026

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 — 07100004. 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
Des Moines River at Fort Dodge, IA	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
Des Moines River at 2nd Avenue at Des Moines, IA	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	125	yes, 20 or more
Values held	360	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-05480500.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 Des Moines gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-middle-des-moines/

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 Des Moines 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 confidence2025-08-01

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 05480500, 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.