The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 1,096 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

1,096

Values held

1867–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Pigeon 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 PIGEON RIVER NEAR HEPCO, NC

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1928–2024.

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	PIGEON RIVER NEAR HEPCO, NC (m³/s)
1928	620
1929	282
1931	226
1932	246
1934	391
1935	320
1936	374
1937	189
1939	274
1940	926
1941	104
1942	201
1944	151
1945	213
1946	385
1947	351
1948	168
1949	595
1950	206
1952	306
1953	340
1954	267
1955	189
1956	345
1957	470
1959	399
1961	323
1963	439
1964	334
1965	501
1966	728
1967	484
1968	360
1969	229
1971	157
1972	507
1973	566
1974	379
1975	402
1976	566
1977	564
1978	419
1979	436
1981	176
1982	274
1983	515
1984	253
1985	128
1987	267
1988	177
1989	182
1990	481
1991	394
1992	211
1994	583
1995	374
1997	255
1998	521
1999	95.4
2000	216
2001	153
2002	159
2003	385
2004	1,034
2005	208
2007	182
2008	317
2009	297
2010	243
2011	323
2013	365
2015	271
2017	209
2018	524
2020	487
2021	677
2022	453
2024	1,563

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	1928–2024
Completeness	80.4% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	19 separate periods inside 1928–2024 hold no value. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1928 and is not continuous from it: 97 years separate the first value from the last, and 80% 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 PIGEON RIVER NEAR HEPCO, NC, as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1928–2025.

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	PIGEON RIVER NEAR HEPCO, NC (mm)
1928	867
1929	964
1930	456
1931	459
1932	788
1933	647
1934	573
1935	581
1936	948
1937	755
1938	545
1939	577
1940	641
1941	351
1942	584
1943	612
1944	571
1945	623
1946	744
1947	586
1948	697
1949	900
1950	672
1951	570
1952	586
1953	482
1954	467
1955	513
1956	558
1957	916
1958	574
1959	722
1960	624
1961	725
1962	714
1963	528
1964	842
1965	614
1966	590
1967	849
1968	621
1969	670
1970	526
1971	708
1972	766
1973	840
1974	834
1975	925
1976	765
1977	759
1978	589
1979	1,007
1980	642
1981	380
1982	621
1983	773
1984	709
1985	449
1986	374
1987	527
1988	337
1989	893
1990	829
1991	795
1992	828
1993	644
1994	888
1995	762
1996	792
1997	759
1998	767
1999	462
2000	440
2001	412
2002	490
2003	851
2004	950
2005	778
2006	557
2007	382
2008	392
2009	711
2010	569
2011	567
2012	567
2013	1,099
2014	589
2015	738
2017	496
2018	981
2019	990
2020	1,104
2021	802
2022	708
2023	546
2024	721
2025	535

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	1928–2025
Completeness	99.0% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	One period inside 1928–2025 holds no value: 2016. It is drawn as a break in the line and is never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1928 and is not continuous from it: 98 years separate the first value from the last, and 99% 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 Pigeon and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
PIGEON RIVER NEAR HEPCO, NC	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	329	1927–2026
PIGEON RIVER AT NEWPORT, TN	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	291	1867–2026
PIGEON RIVER NEAR CANTON, NC	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	261	1932–2026
PIGEON RIVER AT CANTON, NC	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	215	1876–2026

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 — 06010106. 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
PIGEON RIVER NEAR HEPCO, NC	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
PIGEON RIVER AT NEWPORT, TN	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
PIGEON RIVER NEAR CANTON, NC	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
PIGEON RIVER AT CANTON, NC	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 5 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	160	yes, 20 or more
Values held	1,096	yes, 1000 or more
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-03459500.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), Pigeon gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-pigeon/

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 Pigeon 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 confidence2024-12-29

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 03459500, 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.