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What if no base map appears and I can only see a gray background?

By StreamStats

A gray background can mean one of two things. Either you are zoomed in beyond the maximum resolution allowed for your chosen base map, or the web service providing the base map layer is experiencing issues. 

StreamStats relies on web services hosted by others for its base maps that are shown in the background to help users determine where they are on the landscape. By default, StreamStats uses web services provided by the The National Map (http://nationalmap.gov/). Occasionally, these services will fail or they will experiences periods of slow response. When this occurs, then the base map in StreamStats will not appear or there will be long delays before they appear. To avoid this problem you can choose an alternative base map for display by clicking on the layers button in the top right of the map frame, next clicking on the Base Maps banner and then on the radio button to left of the layer that you want to display.