Chehalis River Fun Facts: Water Measurements — What’s a Cubic Foot Per Second?

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A garden hose fills a 5-gallon bucket in about one minute. Therefore, water in the hose can be measured as 5 gallons per minute. Water in rivers is measured by USGS gages at a rate of cubic feet per second, which reports how much water is moving past a given point for one second.

Roughly speaking, 1 cubic foot per second, or cfs, is about 450 gallons per minute.

“That’s a lot of water,” said Mike Gallagher from the Department of Ecology. “That’s like a fire hydrant at full throttle.”



During the 2007 flood, USGS scientists determined the Chehalis River near Doty reached 63,100 cubic feet per second (roughly 5,124,277 average swimming pools per second).

Source: Department of Ecology Southwest Region Water Resources Program.