Flood frequency of the Savannah River at Augusta, Georgia

To fill an increasing need for reliable information on floods of various recurrence intervals on the Savannah River a flood-frequency relation was developed for the long-term gaging station at Augusta, Georgia. The flood-frequency analysis was complicated by the fact that the Savannah River upstream of Augusta has experienced increasing regulation of flow caused by three large dams constructed since 1952. The pre-impoundment period was important to the flood-frequency analysis because it included a number of large floods that, even when adjusted for regulation, exceed all floods since 1952. A reservoir routing model was used to adjust nine such floods for the effects of regulation, and to develop a relation for estimating regulated peak discharges for additional unregulated floods. The 1% chance exceedance flood for regulated conditions on the Savannah River at Augusta was computed as 180,000 cu ft/sec. (USGS)