U.S. River Conditions, July to September 2022

This is an animation showing the changing conditions relative to the historic daily record of USGS streamgages from July 1, 2022 to September 30, 2022. The river conditions shown range from the driest condition seen at a gage (red open circles) to the wettest (blue closed circles). A purple outer ring around a gage indicates it is flooding.   

Drought conditions persisted in California, Oregon, Texas, and Oklahoma, as well as parts of New England from July through September. August monsoon rains brought relief from drought conditions for much of Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. Flooding occurred in Eastern Kentucky and Central Mississippi during the end of July and August, respectively. Toward the end of September, Hurricanes Fiona and Ian caused significant flooding with damages to infrastructure, power outages, and fatalities in Puerto Rico and Florida, respectively. Concurrently, Alaska experienced heavy rains and flooding as an extratropical storm passed.  

Note that both USGS gage height and National Weather Service flood stage levels are necessary to determine flooding conditions and were available for 38% of streamgages at the time this graphic was produced. Only publicly available data from the National Water Information System Website was used and some gages are missing gage height even when they have flow.