GageDataFormat

Gage Format - netCDF

USGS Gage Data

RFC Gage Data

The netCDF data files contain hydrological time series data, focusing on observed and forecasted discharges at a single station over a time span. Below is a detailed breakdown of its structure based on the header:

*** Dimensions:

• stationIdStrLen: The length of the station identifier string, fixed at 5 characters.
• timeStrLen: The length of the time string for timestamps, fixed at 19 characters.
• forecastInd: An unlimited dimension representing the number of forecast and observation points.
• nseries: As presently implemented, a dimension of size 1, indicating that the file contains data for a single station.

*** Variables:

• stationId [dim: stationIdStrLen] (char): A character array with 5 characters representing the station ID.
  • long_name: "RFC station identifier of length 5"
  • units: "-"
• issueTimeUTC [dim: nseries, timeStrLen] (char): A string of length 19 representing the issue time of the data, formatted as "YYYY-MM-DD_HH:mm UTC".
  • long_name: "YYYY-MM-DD_HH:mm UTC"
  • units: "UTC"
• discharges [dim: nseries, forecastInd] (float): A 2D array with dimensions (nseries, forecastInd) representing observed and forecasted discharges (in cubic meters per second).
  • long_name: Explanation of discharge values, which includes 48 hours of observed data before the issue time (T0) and up to 10 days (240 hours) of forecasted data after T0. The total data typically covers 12 days.
  • units: "m^3/s"
• synthetic_values [dim: nseries] (byte): A 2D array with dimensions (nseries, forecastInd) indicating whether a discharge value is synthetic (1) or original (0).
  • long_name: "Whether the discharge value is synthetic or original"
  • units: "-"
• totalCounts [dim: nseries] (short): A scalar representing the total number of observation and forecast values for this station.
  • long_name: "Total count of all observation and forecast values"
  • units: "-"
• observedCounts [dim: nseries] (short): A scalar representing the total number of observed values before T0.
  • long_name: "Total observed values before T0"
  • units: "-"
• forecastCounts [dim: nseries] (short): A scalar representing the total number of forecast values including and after T0.
  • long_name: "Total forecasted values including and after T0"
  • units: "-"
• timeSteps [dim: nseries] (int): A scalar indicating the temporal resolution of forecast values in seconds.
  • long_name: "Frequency/temporal resolution of forecast values"
  • units: "seconds"
• discharge_qualities [dim: nseries] (short): A scalar representing the quality of the discharge data on a scale from 0 to 100, scaled by a factor of 0.01.
  • long_name: "Discharge quality 0 to 100"
  • units: "-"
  • multfactor: "0.01"
• queryTime [dim: nseries] (int64): A scalar representing the time of the data query in Unix time (seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 in the local timezone).
  • units: "seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 local TZ"

*** Global Attributes:

• fileUpdateTimeUTC: Time when the NetCDF file was last updated in UTC.
• sliceStartTimeUTC: Start time of the time slice for the data in UTC.
• sliceTimeResolutionMinutes: Time resolution of the data in minutes (60 minutes).
• missingValue: Value used to represent missing data (-999.99).
• newest_forecast: Indicates whether the data is the newest forecast available.
• NWM_version_number: Version of the National Water Model (NWM) used to generate the data (version 2.1).