During the latter half of the 1990s, the volume of water discharged in most of Minnesota's streams has been significantly greater than normal.
Stream flow has a high correlation to precipitation.
However, only 10 to 30 percent of water falling as precipitation ends up in Minnesota's streams on an annual basis. The remaining 70 to 90 percent recharges the groundwater or near surface aquifers, goes into storage such as lakes and wetlands, evaporates, or is used by plants and animals and transpired back into the air. Period of record hydrographs shown below are ten hydrographs showing the mean annual discharge in cubic feet per second for selected gaging sites. The mean annual discharge is the average of the daily discharges for a given year. Also included on the graphs, are the Q25 and Q75 exceedence levels and the 30 year moving average.