The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 377 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

377

Values held

1910–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Root 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 ROOT RIVER NEAR HOUSTON, MN

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1911–2025.

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	ROOT RIVER NEAR HOUSTON, MN (m³/s)
1911	430
1912	300
1913	283
1914	331
1915	208
1916	226
1917	481
1930	144
1931	130
1932	195
1933	753
1934	538
1935	331
1936	396
1937	411
1938	442
1939	187
1940	223
1941	178
1942	671
1943	300
1944	173
1945	677
1946	388
1947	263
1948	331
1949	239
1950	878
1951	419
1952	1,048
1953	294
1954	152
1955	106
1956	274
1957	63.1
1958	272
1959	286
1960	249
1961	889
1962	835
1963	303
1964	31.4
1965	878
1966	524
1967	402
1968	90.9
1969	234
1970	63.7
1971	254
1972	289
1973	331
1974	561
1975	267
1976	561
1977	64.8
1978	345
1979	294
1980	464
1981	357
1982	126
1983	269
1985	249
1986	385
1988	45.3
1989	138
1990	270
1991	140
1992	163
1993	447
1994	135
1995	177
1996	247
1997	219
1998	215
1999	227
2000	980
2001	473
2002	132
2003	75.0
2004	674
2005	277
2006	223
2007	1,303
2008	456
2009	115
2010	394
2011	340
2012	120
2013	646
2014	229
2015	162
2016	629
2017	245
2018	191
2019	487
2020	200
2021	86.1
2022	212
2023	125
2024	547
2025	340

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	1911–2025
Completeness	87.8% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	3 separate periods inside 1911–2025 hold no value. The longest runs from 1918 to 1929 — 12 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1911 and is not continuous from it: 115 years separate the first value from the last, and 88% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Last read from the publisher	2026-08-31
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 ROOT RIVER NEAR HOUSTON, MN, as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1910–2024.

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	ROOT RIVER NEAR HOUSTON, MN (mm)
1910	130
1911	176
1912	191
1913	144
1914	158
1915	244
1916	226
1931	105
1932	184
1933	184
1934	129
1935	195
1936	190
1937	159
1938	232
1939	150
1940	104
1941	193
1942	281
1943	198
1944	206
1945	257
1946	213
1947	204
1948	148
1949	137
1950	169
1951	237
1952	235
1953	232
1954	166
1955	122
1956	123
1957	97.0
1958	91.0
1959	181
1960	179
1961	183
1962	205
1963	133
1964	80.0
1965	274
1966	157
1967	179
1968	107
1969	185
1970	151
1971	180
1972	209
1973	388
1974	320
1975	225
1976	159
1977	114
1978	227
1979	286
1980	271
1981	226
1982	300
1991	291
1992	288
1993	438
1994	239
1995	227
1996	197
1997	249
1998	280
1999	332
2004	286
2005	261
2006	240
2007	377
2013	407
2014	314
2015	254
2016	406
2017	377
2018	385
2019	608
2020	359
2021	208
2022	272
2023	251
2024	258

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	1910–2024
Completeness	73.0% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	4 separate periods inside 1910–2024 hold no value. The longest runs from 1917 to 1930 — 14 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1910 and is not continuous from it: 115 years separate the first value from the last, and 73% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Last read from the publisher	2026-08-24
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 Root and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
ROOT RIVER NEAR HOUSTON, MN	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow	223	1910–2026
ROOT RIVER NEAR LANESBORO, MN	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow	154	1911–2026

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 — 07040008. 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
ROOT RIVER NEAR HOUSTON, MN	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	2026-08-26
ROOT RIVER NEAR LANESBORO, MN	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	2026-08-26

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 3 of them, which makes it a full profile.

Information-gain signals held for this water body
Signal	Held	Counts
Gauges holding a real record	2	no
Years spanned	117	yes, 20 or more
Values held	377	no
Distinct measurements	4	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-05385000.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), Root gauge records, accessed 2026-09-02, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-root/

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 Root 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 confidence2025-08-20

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 05385000, 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 31 August 2026.