Streamflow
Above normalAmerican River at Fair Oaks streamflow
Daily mean discharge, American-Sacramento basin, California
Data through Oct 15, 2026 · source last checked Oct 17, 2026 · page revised Oct 16, 2026
Cite
- Discharge
About this data
- Source
- US Geological Survey (USGS)
- Series
- Daily mean streamflow (discharge)
- Geography
- American River at Fair Oaks
- Unit
- cfs
- Calculation
- Daily mean
- Last observation
- Oct 15, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 1,780 cfs, 29% above the 5-yr median.
American River streamflow at Fair Oaks stands at 1,780 cfs, 29% above the 5-year median. Year-over-year flow is up 69.5%, while month-over-month the reading dropped 4.3%.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 1,780 cfs | 1,790 cfs | -0.6% |
| Month over month | 1,780 cfs | 1,860 cfs | -4.3% |
| Year over year | 1,780 cfs | 1,050 cfs | +69.5% |
| vs 5-yr median | 1,780 cfs | 1,380 cfs | +29.0% |
| Reading | Discharge |
|---|---|
| Lowest on record for this week | 517 cfs |
| Median for this week | 1,380 cfs |
| Highest on record for this week | 2,600 cfs |
Previous weeks
An earlier week
American River at Fair Oaks is running 1,820 cfs, 32% above the 5-year median. Discharge fell 13.7% over the month but sits 71.7% above year-ago levels, per USGS.
Week of Oct 7, 2026
American River at Fair Oaks reads 1,790 cfs, 22% above the 5-yr median. Flow has fallen 30.1% over the past month, though it remains 64.2% above the reading from a year ago.
Week of Sep 30, 2026
American River at Fair Oaks ran at 1,830 cfs, 4% above the 5-year median. The gauge dropped 27.4% month over month, from 2,520 cfs. Week over week and year over year showed minimal movement, each up 0.5%.
Week of Sep 23, 2026
American River at Fair Oaks is running at 1,820 cfs, 2% above the 5-year median. Flow has dropped 48.6% from a month ago, a typical late-September decline, and is down 1.6% on the week. Year over year, discharge is up 5.2%.
About American River at Fair Oaks
The American River at Fair Oaks ran 1,780 cfs on Oct 15, 2026: 1,780 cubic feet of water passing the gauge every second (what cfs means), or about 3,531 acre-feet a day. That is 29% above the 5-year median of 1,380 cfs for the date. Flow is about where it was a month earlier (1,860 cfs on Sep 15, 2026). Its water comes out of Folsom Lake a few miles upstream. Below Fair Oaks the American joins the Sacramento in the city of Sacramento, downstream of the Sacramento River at Verona gauge, so Verona's reading does not include it.
USGS gage 11446500 sits on the American River at Fair Oaks, below Nimbus Dam and the Folsom Dam complex behind it, in the Sacramento suburbs a few miles above the confluence with the mainstem Sacramento. Nearly everything it measures is a release decision: the American's roughly 1,900-square-mile drainage on the Sierra's west slope is captured at Folsom, and Nimbus regulates what leaves. Folsom carries a large flood-control reservation through the winter, so a share of the basin's runoff is passed through rather than stored.
The result is a year with sharp winter release peaks, a spring shaped by snowmelt filling Folsom behind the dam, and a summer floor set by minimum flow and temperature requirements for fall-run chinook rather than by hydrology. A summer reading at the low end of its range usually means Folsom is protecting storage and a cold-water pool; a winter surge means flood space is being recovered.