Monitor rising water levels in the rivers in your county with the County Rivers Android app.

The app currently monitors river gage data from the USGS and NOAA in Washington State for Clallam, Grays Harbor, King, Lewis, Mason, Pacific, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Thurston and Whatcom counties.

Last fall I wrote a Twitter bot which monitors information from the USGS and NOAA on river water levels in King County, Washington. It tweets hourly updates when water levels reach the alert thresholds set for the individual river gages. It wasn't long after I implemented the @kingrivers account that I received requests for rivers in other counties. By the end of fall 2009 I had Twitter accounts for ten counties which were monitoring water levels on 43 rivers. The system works well but the tweets can become overwhelming when several of the rivers start hitting alert thresholds.

With La Niña almost upon us and climatologists predicting above-average rainfall, increased snow pack and lower temperatures from late September until spring it is likely we are going to see an increased chance of floods. For this reason, porting the Twitter application over to work on Android phones seemed like a good next move and hopefully more people can make use of it.

If you are in a county I do not have listed or want to know if a particular river can be added to the watch list please let me know. If you use the application and have suggestions or feedback, drop me a line.