My reply contained herein (and earlier in the changed thread as well -

BTW - this is cut from my original post -

"I have found myself spending a lot of time explaining river gauges and
river levels to a variety of people in our organization so they have
some idea about risk management."

I did not say that I was teaching a class or specifically say that I was
talking about students when I was actually looking for information
specifically for administrators.

D.L. wrote:

"Eric" wrote in message
...
Maybe I should stop trying to explain things to risk managers /


administrators and just go paddling instead! Which is what I plan to do
this weekend.



I thought you were asking us about your students. The answer for
bureaucrats in a legal/liability situation is adifferent kettle of fish.
Your attempt to hide your motivation only leads me to wonder what else you
are hiding. Did you have an injury on one of your trips?


No, there has not been an injury in our program. There has merely been
an ongoing effort within our organization to make sure that people on
all levels (participants, instructors, program directors,
administrators) have an understanding of what we do in our program and
why we make the decisions we do. This would prevent someone from making
a statement like "Oh, the river is only at 5 feet. That can't be too
deep - go ahead and paddle it." when they know nothing about
hydrodynamics. It's no different than me sitting in a weekly meeting
and asking questions about Automated External Defibrillators when it
does not have specific bearing on my program area.

It's basically a question about trying to find an easy way to explain
paddling issues to non-paddlers.

Combining stages would be meaningless. The CFSs, though, had better add
up,


unless it's raining or it's VERY, VERY dry.



Don't forget the groundwater part of the equation. Groundwater can either
add or subtract from flow levels and is a bigger factor than evaporation,
unless you have a major lake or reservoir. Groundwater tends to be a
seasonal factor. Here in the West where we receive most of our
precipitation in the Winter the cycle goes like this:

Fall Groundwater replenishes - decreased runoff
Winter Ground saturated - increased runoff - to snow level
Spring Ground saturated - increased runoff combined with snowmelt
Summer Groundwater runoff contribution gradually declines.

Groundwater is also affected by recent years precipitation and will be
decreased following a period of drought.

-Doug




Also makes sense here - although we had a drought last year, we have had
a much wetter spring than normal that has saturated the groundwater
table. Thus, when we have some of the violent thunderstorms or remnants
of tropical storms that roll through Virginia, water levels can elevate
rather quickly.

Eric