The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 719 values from 4 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

719

Values held

1906–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Owens Lake huc8 subbasin

4 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 COTTONWOOD C NR OLANCHA CA

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1906–1971.

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 (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	COTTONWOOD C NR OLANCHA CA (m³/s)
1906	12.3
1907	4.45
1921	3.11
1922	8.58
1923	3.99
1924	2.83
1925	1.47
1926	2.78
1927	5.27
1928	1.44
1929	1.33
1930	2.38
1931	0.595
1932	7.33
1933	1.98
1934	1.25
1935	2.35
1936	3.91
1937	7.93
1938	5.95
1939	2.89
1940	3.45
1941	9.09
1942	4.79
1943	5.10
1944	4.05
1945	5.10
1946	4.59
1947	3.65
1948	2.38
1949	3.23
1950	2.29
1951	0.736
1952	7.25
1953	1.47
1954	3.20
1955	0.595
1956	3.37
1957	3.68
1958	7.25
1959	0.425
1960	0.227
1961	0.396
1962	5.07
1963	4.56
1964	0.821
1965	4.08
1967	7.82
1968	1.61
1969	14.7
1970	1.90
1971	1.33

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	1906–1971
Completeness	78.8% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	2 separate periods inside 1906–1971 hold no value. The longest runs from 1908 to 1920 — 13 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1906 and is not continuous from it: 66 years separate the first value from the last, and 79% 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 OWENS R NR BIG PINE CA, as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1912–1974.

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	OWENS R NR BIG PINE CA (mm)
1912	48.0
1913	42.0
1914	95.0
1915	66.0
1916	95.0
1917	71.0
1918	60.0
1919	47.0
1920	39.0
1921	40.0
1922	70.0
1923	41.0
1924	29.0
1925	33.0
1926	40.0
1927	59.0
1928	41.0
1929	34.0
1930	54.0
1931	53.0
1932	54.0
1933	55.0
1934	47.0
1935	59.0
1936	52.0
1937	71.0
1938	116
1939	64.0
1940	52.0
1941	55.0
1942	74.0
1943	67.0
1944	63.0
1945	62.0
1946	75.0
1947	76.0
1948	71.0
1949	71.0
1950	71.0
1951	75.0
1952	70.0
1953	79.0
1954	74.0
1955	75.0
1956	74.0
1957	70.0
1958	79.0
1959	74.0
1960	75.0
1961	71.0
1962	72.0
1963	78.0
1964	69.0
1965	77.0
1966	76.0
1967	90.0
1968	75.0
1969	137
1970	95.0
1971	90.0
1972	88.0
1973	88.0
1974	92.0

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	1912–1974
Completeness	100.0% of the periods in that span are held.
Continuity	Continuous: every year from 1912 to 1974 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 Owens Lake and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
COTTONWOOD C NR OLANCHA CA	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	197	1906–2026
OWENS R NR BIG PINE CA	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	183	1912–2026
COTTONWOOD C NR OLANCHA CA.+ PH CA	burned area within 50 km, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	170	1906–2019
INDEPENDENCE C BL PINYON C NR INDEPENDENCE CA	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	169	1923–2026

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 — 18090103. 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
COTTONWOOD C NR OLANCHA CA	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
OWENS R NR BIG PINE CA	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
COTTONWOOD C NR OLANCHA CA.+ PH CA	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
INDEPENDENCE C BL PINYON C NR INDEPENDENCE CA	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	4	yes, 3 or more
Years spanned	121	yes, 20 or more
Values held	719	no
Distinct measurements	5	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-10286000.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), Owens Lake gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-owens-lake/

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 Owens Lake 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 confidence1971-05-13

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 10286000, 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.