Rainfall and River Elevation Information

There are 6 Flood Warning Gauges and 15 United States Geological Service (USGS) gauges in the area. The Flood Warning gauges are operated by the USGS and the National Weather Service (NWS). Their web site is www.nws.noaa.gov. Warning and watch information is available on their web page and the link for Fulton County is http://www.weather.gov/alerts-beta/wwaatmget.php?x=GAC121. The information from all of the USGS gauges is reported real time and can be reached using the USGS web page http://ga.water.usgs.gov/. All of the USGS gauges report gauge height and most of them also tell the amount of precipitation. A table of the gauges is provided in Table 1. The gauge locations are shown on Figure 1.

Table 1 – Gauges in the area

Figure 1 – USGS Gauges and NOAA Gauges in the Sandy Springs area

NOAA Gauges

The NWS issues flood alerts based on elevations in the stream and the forecast of rain and stream response. These alerts give residents in low lying areas time to move furniture and other belongings up out of projected flood levels. During heavy rainfall, the NOAA forecasts look like Figure 2. Web Page URLs are given in Table 2 for all of the gauges.

Figure 2 – Example of Flood Warning gauge located just South of Sandy Springs on Nancy Creek.

USGS Gauges

All of the USGS gauges report gauge height and most of them also tell the amount of precipitation. Some gauges have additional information concerning water quality. Any gauge of interest can be saved as a favorite on a Web page and accessed directly without going thought the USGS home page. In addition, gauge height can be obtained using e-mail by e-mailing StreaMail@USGS.gov and putting the gauge number in the subject line.

An example of the flow data and precipitation data for the USGS data for the Nancy Creek Gauge near Rickerbacker, looks like Figure 3 and 4. Figure 4 shows that about 0.7 inches of rain was received on the day of June 15, 2010 at this location. Web Page URLs are given in Table 2 for all of the USGS gauges.

Figure 3 – Example of USGS Flow data at the Rickenbacker Gauge

Gauge Height, Feet - Most recent instantaneous value: 0.77 06-17-2010 10:15 EST

Figure 4 – Example of Precipitation data for the Rickerbacker Gauge:

Precipitation, total, inches - Most recent instantaneous value: 0.00 06-17-2010 10:15 EST

Table 2 – URLs for Gauges in Sandy Springs Area