HydrionisGlobal Water Intelligence
HUC8 subbasin

Otter Tail

2 monitoring stations within this area in United States, holding 85 values between 1904 and 2026. A United States federal hydrologic unit at the eight-digit subbasin level — a drainage area, not a river. Many subbasins take the name of the largest river within them, and the gauges below are anywhere inside the area, including on tributaries.

United StatesHUC8 subbasin

The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 85 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.

2
Gauges
85
Values held
1904–2026
Record spans
Gauges within the Otter Tail huc8 subbasin
2 monitoring points, positioned as the publisher records them.
Gauges within the Otter Tail huc8 subbasinOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN, PELICAN RIVER NEAR FERGUS FALLS, MNOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MNPELICAN RIVER NEAR FERGUS FALLS, MN

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 OTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN
The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1904–2025.
Shading marks when something was recorded, not what caused the line.
Largest measured flow of each year at OTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MNLargest measured flow of each year at OTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN: OTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN in m³/s, from 1904 to 2025.Hurricane Katrina water and sanitation collapse010203040m³/s1904191319952001200720132020OTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1904: 30.6 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1905: 24.2 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1908: 26.1 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1909: 16.4 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1911: 7.76 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1912: 11.4 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1913: 21.5 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1914: 16.5 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1915: 23.7 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1916: 27.8 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1916: 17.4 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1992: 9.49 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1993: 23.8 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1995: 20.2 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1996: 27.2 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1997: 28.1 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1998: 28.6 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 1999: 29.4 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2000: 18.6 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2001: 33.1 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2002: 18.8 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2003: 17.3 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2004: 14.3 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2005: 27.6 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2006: 26.8 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2007: 27.0 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2008: 22.4 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2009: 37.7 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2010: 32.3 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2011: 38.5 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2012: 24.0 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2013: 33.4 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2014: 32.0 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2014: 27.5 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2016: 20.0 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2017: 23.8 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2018: 26.9 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2019: 28.6 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2020: 28.9 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2021: 20.1 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2022: 32.8 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2023: 27.2 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2024: 21.8 m³/sOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN 2025: 15.7 m³/s

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.

EventTypePeriodStandingAuthority
Hurricane Katrina water and sanitation collapseFlood2005-08-29 – 2005-09-30Documented 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
PeriodOTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MN (m³/s)
190430.6
190524.2
190826.1
190916.4
19117.76
191211.4
191321.5
191416.5
191523.7
191627.8
19929.49
199323.8
199520.2
199627.2
199728.1
199828.6
199929.4
200018.6
200133.1
200218.8
200317.3
200414.3
200527.6
200626.8
200727.0
200822.4
200937.7
201032.3
201138.5
201224.0
201333.4
201432.0
201620.0
201723.8
201826.9
201928.6
202028.9
202120.1
202232.8
202327.2
202421.8
202515.7

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 existMeasured
Period held1904–2025
Completeness34.4% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps
  • 5 separate periods inside 1904–2025 hold no value. The longest runs from 1917 to 1991 — 75 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
ContinuityThe record begins in 1904 and is not continuous from it: 122 years separate the first value from the last, and 34% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Last read from the publisher2026-10-01
RedistributionPermitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reusePermitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
MethodologyHow this was produced

Every gauge Hydrionis holds within this area

GaugeMeasuresValuesRecord
OTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MNcatchment area, annual maximum river flow451904–2026
PELICAN RIVER NEAR FERGUS FALLS, MNcatchment area, annual maximum river flow401909–2026

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 — 09020103. 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.

GaugeEvidenceEstablished
OTTER TAIL RIVER NEAR ELIZABETH, MNStated 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/42026-10-02
PELICAN RIVER NEAR FERGUS FALLS, MNStated 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/42026-10-02

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.

SignalHeldCounts
Gauges holding a real record0no
Years spanned123yes, 20 or more
Values held85no
Distinct measurements2yes, 2 or more
Publishers measuring it1no
Official identifiers1recorded, not counted

Use this data

Use this data

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), Otter Tail gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-otter-tail/

Cite Hydrionis where you rely on the compilation, the normalisation, the eligibility judgements or a chart. Where you use an unmodified published value, the publisher’s attribution is the one that is required; crediting Hydrionis as well is welcome and is not something Hydrionis can require of you.

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 Otter Tail 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 confidence2025-06-17

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 05030500, 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.

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