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USGS Gauge 03448050 — French Broad River below I-26 near Bent Creek, Nc, North Carolina

Water temperature 48.6 °F. 0.3 °F below the five-year normal for this date.

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35.51222222, -82.57722222. This gauge on USGS Water Data →

This gauge is not reporting

This gauge is not sending water temperature — it has sent no water temperature for 313 days, since 19 November 2025. USGS still answers for it, with the last value it ever sent and nothing to say the sensor has gone, so nothing on this page is presented as a current reading. The figure above is modelled: this gauge's own fitted line, its intercept plus its slope against the 3-day mean air temperature over it, fitted on its own daily record, built from 1,046 days of this gauge's own record. A gauge stopping does not unmake what it recorded while it ran, and the record below is the same record the line was fitted on. Its scatter against that record is ±1.7 °F, and it is a statement about what this water usually does at this air temperature, not about what it is doing. Everything below — the record, the monthly means, the thirty-day chart — is the gauge's own history and is unaffected. The normal is the mean of every reading at this gauge within 3 days of this calendar date in the previous years of record — 28 readings, averaging 48.9 °F.

The last thirty days

Water temperature, °F · daily mean
2025-10-20 44.8–58.1 °F 2025-11-18

Daily means from USGS. A gap in the line is a gap in the record.

The record at this gauge

Month Mean temp Mean flow
Jan 41.4 °F —
Feb 46.7 °F —
Mar 51.9 °F —
Apr 58.5 °F —
May 64.7 °F —
Jun 70.9 °F —
Jul 75.3 °F —
Aug 73.1 °F —
Sep 68.7 °F —
Oct 58.9 °F —
Nov 50.5 °F —
Dec 44.7 °F —

Computed here from the last 5 years of USGS daily values at this gauge — 1,499 temperature days over 4.1 years and 0 flow days. These are not USGS-published normals, and a month with fewer than 20 days of record is left blank rather than averaged.

What this gauge predicts

This is one of the gauges this site fits an air-to-water model against, which is how the map colours water that has no gauge on it. July mean 74.45 °F; the fit explains 86% of the variance with a typical error of 1.735 °F.

The water it stands in

French Broad River.

We hold no coldwater classification for this river, so the page makes no claim about one. The gauge is here because it stands close to water that does carry a designation.

Snapped to NHD reach French Broad River (25000400416175), 42.3 m away. That join is what lets the app paint this gauge's reading onto the reach it measures.

Other gauges near this one

Dams near this gauge

A dam upstream of a gauge moves what the gauge reads. A hydro dam moves it on a release schedule this page does not know.

Access near this gauge

Fly shops nearby

Open this water on the map →Every reach around it coloured by today's water temperature, with the access points along it.Or get BirdTrout on the App Store