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Little Tonawanda Creek, New York

18.3 mapped river miles, draining 39 square miles, in the Niagara River basin watershed. No gauge stands in it; the nearest is 22.8 miles away, and what this page knows about its temperature is NYSDEC's classification of the water itself.

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Map key
Public land — where the bank is open to walk and fish
USGS gauge — live water temperature
Water temperature — the colour of the river, and of every dot on it

50°F and colder is cold, through cold-transitional and cool, to warm above 70°F — the same four bands, breaking at 58, 64 and 70°F, that the app paints. Grey is water nobody has measured.

The nearest live reading

The nearest gauge is 22.8 miles away, at Oak Orchard Creek Near Shelby Ny — not a reading of this water, but of what the region is doing today.

62.6 °F
Oak Orchard Creek Near Shelby Ny
22.8 mi away · 74 cfs · read 30 Sep, 10:30 pm ET
Cold-transitional

Thermal classification

NYSDEC's classification of this water, reach by reach. A class, not a temperature — no July mean, because none was measured here.

Reach Typed miles Band NYSDEC type
RM 14.0–7.6 6.4 cold —

NYSDEC has classified 6.4 of the 19.1 miles NHD carries for this stream — 33% of it. Every typed reach carries the same class, cold. The untyped reaches are not warm water — they are water NYSDEC's inventory does not reach, and the mile ranges above span only the reaches it does.

Questions about this river

NYSDEC classification

NYSDEC classifies this water as Class A — drinking water source. On those reaches DEC also designates it trout waters — which is the half of the classification that is about temperature, and the half this map paints by. The class is a designation of best usage under 6 NYCRR — what the water is protected for — and not the season and creel rules, which change yearly and live with the agency.

NYSDEC water quality classifications and standards →

Access

1 mapped NYSDEC access site within a quarter mile of the water, upstream first: Little Tonawanda Creek Angler Parking (RM 12.2). 1 walk-in, 0 boat or canoe launches.

Public land on the river

2 units of public or open-access land touch this river, 352 acres in total. Acreage is the whole unit, not the part beside the water.

Unit Owner Acres
Little Tonawanda Creek — State Land, Fishing Access NYSDEC 31
Groveland Secondary Trailway state conservation department 321

Species

NYSDEC designates this as trout water — Trout waters — without naming the species. No fish survey or stocking record for this water is in the files this site reads.

Tributaries and watershed

1 named stream meets this one. Confluence miles are above the mouth; the longest twelve are listed.

Little Tonawanda Creek sits in HUC 8 04270101, the Niagara River basin, and drains 39 square miles, Strahler order 4 at the mouth. 62 NHD reaches carry the name for 19.1 miles in total — more than the 18.3 miles of drawn mainstem, because NHD counts side channels and braids as their own reaches.

Other water nearby

The closest 6 rivers on this site, straight-line from the middle of this one — not drive time.