The National Drought Mitigation Center is publishing 7-, 14- and 28-day streamflow maps via the U.S. Drought Monitor website, based on U.S. Geological Survey data. The maps are automatically updated daily at 8 a.m. central time.NDMC Communications
The National Drought Mitigation Center is publishing 7-, 14- and 28-day streamflow maps via the U.S. Drought Monitor website, based on U.S. Geological Survey data. The USGS stopped publishing those products earlier this year.
“The 7-, 14- and 28-day products are essential for our drought monitoring efforts and for the USDM in particular,” said Mark Svoboda, NDMC director and founding USDM author.
“This is an important look at the data, one of the original USDM indicators, and it went away earlier this year when USGS retired their WaterWatch page,” said Brian Fuchs, NDMC drought monitoring coordinator. “The daily data were there from USGS, and we accessed it and did the programming to recreate the streamflow percentile products.”
The U.S. Drought Monitor authors have been using a version of the maps since June, and the NDMC team wanted to share the maps more broadly for the many users and decision makers who had come to rely on them. The maps are automatically updated daily at 8 a.m. central time.
The NDMC’s USGS Streamflow Percentile maps compare recent streamflow data with historic observations, with each point on the map representing a USGS stream gauge. Points are colored according to an 11-level scale, ranging from Exceptionally Wet to Exceptionally Dry, with each level representing a percent of normal range.
The NDMC, which is based at the University of Nebraska, provided streamflow maps as part of its work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of the Chief Economist and Agricultural Research Service, ensuring the quality and availability of data for the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Streamflow maps are online: https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/ConditionsOutlooks/Streamflow.aspx