USGS 'My Favorites' Can Speed Up Your Gage Browsing
By Larry Lempert
Apps and websites usually are loaded with features and shortcuts that most users never use and in all likelihood don't even know about. These little tricks often could be helpful if we took the time to dig them up, and once dug if we could remember them. This not so remarkable epiphany came to me when I was poking around the USGS web site (as we all do regularly, right?) and happened on a blog page "New Feature – My Favorites" (updated Nov. 27, 2024, originally posted Mar. 8).
My Favorites is a USGS customization tool that lets you keep track of the latest data for locations you are interested in. Let's say it has just rained heavily, and you wonder how levels are responding on all the streams you most like the paddle. If you have configured My Favorites, you can see that information laid out nicely on one page and eyeball it quickly.
This USGS tool is for users who already know what various levels mean at their favorite locations. There is no coding—like the color coding on the American Whitewater site—to indicate whether a level is high, low, or just right. For the right kind of user, though, USGS Favorites can be a great time-saver, in precisely those circumstances when acting quickly can be a big benefit, helping paddlers get on a great stream while the getting is still good. Living in a region with relatively nearby whitewater paddling in four states (what a blessing!) increases the benefit of having all Favorites, regardless of which state, on one page.
If you typically check only two or three gages, creating a Favorites page may be overkill. If choosing paddling destinations often has you bouncing back and forth among many gages, a single page is a real benefit.
Interested? Here's What to Do
Before you go to the setup page, make a list of the USGS identification numbers for the locations you want to include. This is a rather geeky start to what is not otherwise, for the most part, a geeky process. If you are accustomed to going directly to an official USGS gage page, the ID number appears in the big, bold heading at the top of the page. For example, the gage page used for the Staircase run has the prominent heading "Shenandoah River at Millville, WV – 01636500," and that number at the end is the ID.
If you don't know the individual gage pages to visit, you can get to these pages from the familiar AW state summary page. For example, on the AW West Virginia summary page, click on the Staircase link, then the Flow tab (in the left pane), and then the US Geological Survey box (to the right of the color graph) to get to the official Millville page displaying the ID.
A third alternative for obtaining IDs is to visit a USGS state current conditions page. From the national page, use the dropdown (upper right) to select a state. On the resulting page, click on the heading "Statewide Streamflow Table." This will give you a page with IDs for every gage in the state.
Once you've collected your list of IDs, go to the "My favorite monitoring locations" setup page and click on the big "Customize favorites" button. You'll see boxes for entering these location IDs (click on "Update location list" when you're done) and for selecting the data you want to see (typically, gage height or CFS, but some gages have additional information, such as water temperature). There is a reminder, well worth heeding, to bookmark the page that gets produced, whose URL will now incorporate all your IDs. If you just enter the default URL for selecting Favorites, you'll have to enter the IDs all over again—you will not be pleased.
Further down on the same page, your favorites will be displayed with the latest data. To avoid expanding each one separately, you can click on "Show all details" above the list on the right.