The monitoring network within this area

Hydrionis holds 288 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

288

Values held

1901–2026

Record spans

Gauges within the Watauga, North Carolina, Tennessee 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 DOE RIVER AT ELIZABETHTON, TN

The highest instantaneous discharge the publisher recorded in each year — a flood peak as measured, not a daily average of one. 1901–2022.

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	DOE RIVER AT ELIZABETHTON, TN (m³/s)
1901	708
1912	71.4
1913	119
1914	33.1
1916	85.0
1921	116
1922	50.4
1923	68.2
1924	143
1926	42.8
1927	133
1929	64.6
1931	45.3
1933	85.0
1934	112
1935	185
1936	121
1937	56.1
1938	62.3
1940	207
1941	35.1
1942	46.4
1944	104
1946	121
1947	101
1948	47.0
1949	45.6
1950	118
1951	69.1
1953	118
1954	146
1955	82.4
1956	166
1957	175
1958	106
1959	198
1960	62.6
1961	164
1963	223
1964	83.8
1965	225
1966	133
1967	51.8
1968	68.8
1969	54.1
1971	67.1
1972	105
1973	160
1974	163
1975	139
1976	43.0
1977	179
1979	83.8
1981	58.6
1982	103
2017	115
2018	165
2020	200
2021	98.8
2022	76.5

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	1901–2022
Completeness	49.2% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	17 separate periods inside 1901–2022 hold no value. The longest runs from 1983 to 2016 — 34 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1901 and is not continuous from it: 122 years separate the first value from the last, and 49% 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 DOE RIVER AT ELIZABETHTON, TN, as a depth

The year's flow spread over the land draining to this gauge, in millimetres — the same unit rainfall is measured in. 1912–2023.

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	DOE RIVER AT ELIZABETHTON, TN (mm)
1912	491
1913	531
1914	449
1915	490
1921	615
1922	607
1923	676
1924	612
1925	363
1926	486
1927	720
1928	730
1929	723
1930	382
1934	452
1935	710
1936	660
1937	523
1938	582
1939	478
1940	493
1941	293
1942	476
1943	503
1944	517
1945	583
1946	524
1947	522
1948	495
1949	623
1950	693
1951	519
1952	388
1953	402
1954	470
1955	509
1956	552
1957	803
1958	635
1959	571
1960	551
1961	656
1962	655
1963	540
1964	576
1965	531
1966	622
1967	604
1968	465
1969	415
1970	402
1971	613
1972	675
1973	707
1974	901
1975	679
1976	549
1977	700
1978	580
1979	768
1980	498
1981	457
2017	551
2018	868
2019	853
2020	870
2021	601
2022	528
2023	580

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	1912–2023
Completeness	61.6% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps	3 separate periods inside 1912–2023 hold no value. The longest runs from 1982 to 2016 — 35 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
Continuity	The record begins in 1912 and is not continuous from it: 112 years separate the first value from the last, and 62% 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 Watauga, North Carolina, Tennessee and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
DOE RIVER AT ELIZABETHTON, TN	burned area within 50 km, catchment area, annual maximum river flow, mean river flow, mean river flow, water year	248	1901–2026
WATAUGA RIVER BELOW WILBUR DAM, TN	catchment area, annual maximum river flow	40	1904–2026

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 — 06010103. 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
DOE RIVER AT ELIZABETHTON, 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
WATAUGA RIVER BELOW WILBUR DAM, 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

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	1	no
Years spanned	126	yes, 20 or more
Values held	288	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-03485500.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), Watauga, North Carolina, Tennessee gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/united-states-watauga-north-carolina-tennessee/

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 Watauga, North Carolina, Tennessee 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 confidence2022-02-24

Source: USGS — National Water Information System, USGS site 03485500, 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.