Barren River near Finney, KY Water Level Today

NWS river forecast

Forecast from the NOAA National Water Prediction Service. Issued a few times a day and only while a forecast is active. Not for navigation.

Last 30 days

About this gauge

USGS gauge 03313000 sits on the Barren River and reads everything draining 942 square miles of the Barren basin. Only 865 square miles of that contributes flow in a normal year; the rest is closed basin that does not drain to the river. Its datum sits 399 feet above sea level NAVD88. Daily flow is on record here from 1965 to 1994, 30 years in all.

Where this gauge sits in the drainage

Barren River Lake near Finney, KY sits immediately upstream, so dam releases rather than rainfall set the flow here. No gauged site sits above this one on the mainstem, so this is the first published reading on the river. Downstream the next reading comes from Barren River at Bowling Green, KY at 1,849 square miles, so what passes this gauge is about 51% of the water measured there.

Normal flows here

The Barren River runs a median of 641 cfs at this gauge across 30 years of record. January is the fullest month at a median 2,680 cfs, and April the leanest at 160 cfs. The highest daily mean on record is 7,150 cfs in 1979, and the lowest is 0.0 cfs in 1977.

Medians from the USGS daily-statistics record, 1965 to 1994. A month at 100% is running at its own long-term median. USGS stopped publishing a daily flow record at this gauge, so these are historical norms, not a baseline for current readings.