River Water Level Tracker — USGS Real-Time Gauge Data

Get real-time river and stream gauge readings from official USGS monitoring stations, by state or by specific site numbers. Results are sorted highest-reading-first, so the sites closest to flood/high-water risk surface at the top without needing a separate flood-stage lookup.

Built for field-operations, logistics, agriculture, and insurance teams who need current water-level conditions, not a forecast.

Input

{
  "stateCode": "CO",
  "siteNumbers": "",
  "parameter": "gaugeHeight",
  "minValue": null,
  "maxResults": 50
}

Field	Type	Description
stateCode	string	Two-letter US state code to survey all active sites in. Ignored if siteNumbers is set.
siteNumbers	string (optional)	Comma-separated USGS site numbers to check instead of a whole state, e.g. "07227420,09404200".
parameter	string	"gaugeHeight" (water surface elevation, feet) or "streamflow" (discharge, cubic feet per second). Default "gaugeHeight".
minValue	number (optional)	Only return sites at or above this reading. Leave blank to return all sites.
maxResults	number	Max sites to return, highest reading first. Default 50, max 200.

Either stateCode or siteNumbers is required.

Output

One record per monitoring site:

{
  "siteNumber": "07227420",
  "siteName": "ARKANSAS RIVER AT HOLLY, CO.",
  "latitude": 38.0522,
  "longitude": -102.1213,
  "parameter": "Gage height, ft",
  "unit": "ft",
  "value": 12.43,
  "dateTime": "2026-08-13T19:45:00.000-06:00"
}

A search with no matching sites returns no items but is still billed once for the search.

How it works

Direct calls to the official USGS Water Services API (waterservices.usgs.gov) — no proxy, no key, no scraping. Public U.S. government data, updated in near real-time by USGS monitoring equipment (typically every 15–60 minutes per site).

Note: this actor returns the raw reading, not an official flood classification — USGS gauge data isn't paired with NWS flood-stage thresholds in this feed. Use minValue with a threshold you already know for a site (or sort by the default highest-first order) to spot high-water conditions.

Pricing note

Billed per search, not per site returned — one charge whether the search returns 0 sites or 200.

Related products

• US Weather Forecast & Alerts Tracker — forecasts and active NWS alerts, the atmospheric-conditions counterpart to this actor's water-level data
• Disaster Declaration Tracker — official FEMA disaster declarations, for after a flood is already declared