Lee Creek gauge needs maintenance

[kayakdoc]

The gauge showed a peak of about 6.8 last night and it was well over 10 feet yesterday at. 7 pm. Probably in the 11-12 ft range then actually. Who do we notify of the discrepancy?

[panicman]

Keep in mind that guage is a very long way from 220 where we run it. A lot of long pools that have to be filled up before it when it has been running low for quite some time. Majority of rain fell in the upper part of lee creek water shed to get it going.

[iYak]

Yea, they got more rain up north but the whole creek got at least an inch all the way down, and while it should take some time to fill everything up, it definitely should have showed up on the gauge by now because it probably got close to 14 feet by the time we left, and it was a long slow rain. Instead, the gauge peaked out around 6.8.

Lee Creek should be at a good level today, don't let the gauge scare you off. We are heading out from the Fort sometime after 4:00. We are looking for someone to boat with, post or give me a call - 47 9 80 6 2 6 1 7

[kayakdoc]

Yah, my point was that it never showed the actual rise-not only I n a reasonable downstream delay but never. I agree with Rob in that it looked about 14 feet back up at the putin after taking off. It should have at least shown more than 6.88 feet 4 hours later. Something has to be wrong with the gauge.

[Half Ton]

I wonder how long its been off, and if we've missed a few runs because of a faulty reading this year? I ran into a usgs gauging crew at foghorns last week. They were calibrating a bunch of sites up here, too bad lee was not on the radar quite yet.

[Jim Krueger]

From my experience visiting with the USGS about the gauge on the Upper Caddo several years ago, you just need to email them a note to the Little Rock office. It's been too long for me to remember the guy's name but he wrote back very shortly.

Best Regards
Jim

[iYak]

Lee was at a good level again yesterday, I'd say over 7 feet. It will be there again today.

[sig]

Before we go off complaining about the gage we should make sure we're all looking at the same gage since there are several with similar names.

Lee Creek near Short, OK
5/22 02:45 10.41ft 10,600cfs

Lee Creek at Lee Creek Reservoir near Van Buren, AR
5/22 06:45 21.8ft 7,970cfs

LITTLE Lee Creek near Nicut, OK
5/21 21:15 6.92ft 2,680cfs

[sig]

After look at the gage locations in Google Earth, it's clear that LITTLE Lee Creek near Nicut OK is a different creek.

I'm not sure whether you all normally look at the Short OK gage or the Van Buren gage but the one at Van Buren appears to be on the outlet of a dam. That reservoir can attenuate/mask peaks depending on how full they keep the reservoir and whether it was designed for flood control or as a water supply.

[sig]

Hhhmmmm...

Apparently there are two gage's with very similar names:

Lee Creek AT Short, OK
5/22 01:15 6.88ft 1,850cfs

Lee Creek NEAR Short, OK
5/22 02:45 10.41ft 10,600cfs

The Ozark Creek page links to the "at" gage which is upstream of the "near" gage.

Between the "at" and "near" gages we have Briar Creek and Little Lee Creek coming in. 1850 + 2680 still isn't close to the 10600cfs on the "near" gage.

It looks like the new bridge is really new. I wonder if the gage got out of calibration during construction?

[Dr. Steve Yaney]

[Dr. Steve Yaney]

Potential problem reported to Bill Baldwin. He says they'll check it out!

[iYak]

Thanks Steve!

Sig - no confusion on the gauge, it's the one at Short Oklahoma. Check out the gauge page http://www.ozarkpages.com/cgi-bin/stages.pl?ST=level" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; , find Lee Creek, then click on the USGS link http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/uv/?site_no=07249800" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Cowper]

I'll share a little experience we had with the big piney gauge in case the same thing is happening at lee.

We would get eyewitness reports from the Moores who live right at the gauge that The creek was at 5, 6 or even 7 feet. A day later the gage would show a slow rise, maybe two days later the slow rise would still be rising, even after witnesses reported the creek was now falling. The gage would eventually get up to 3.5 or 4 feet, but it peaked days after the real peak, and never anywhere near the real peak value. USGS was called, but they couldn't find anything wrong with the gage, everything seemed to be working fine as far as they could tell. But the readings would still miss showing any rapid rises in the river.

Then one day somebody went up there during low water, and found that river floods had buried the end of the pipe that houses the sensing tube under wire a bit of sand, gravel, and silt. That's why it took days for some of the water to seep through the sand and be detected by the gage. By then the river was already falling, so the gage never did see the peak value. Two hours of careful digging later, the river showed a step change in level at almost the exact same time that the end of the pipe was finally uncovered. The gage has been working fine ever since. (I think this might have been reported to USGS, So they may have done some more digging with heavier equipment after that to keep it going good, I'm not really sure about that part of the story.)