Extreme stages trigger instantaneous emergency transmissions.
Recent software enhancements speed delivery of river stage and flow information to water managers through the World-Wide Web. At the same session Russell Harnkess of the USGS in North Dakota will describe the value of the 53 USGS gauging stations in the basin of the Red River of the North last spring as the flood on that river moved downstream towards Grand Forks. Data from 37 of those stations were displayed on the Internet and were used by the general public, as well as emergency-response managers to make decisions about evacuation and measures that were taken to protect property from the rising flood waters. Brian McCallum of the USGS in Baton Rouge. This network, called the Louisiana HydroWatch, uses satellite and VHF transmitters at more than 200 gaging stations located throughout the state to relay the latest hydrologic data to the USGS office in Baton Rouge.