Streamflow
Near normalColumbia River at The Dalles streamflow
Daily mean discharge, Columbia basin, Oregon
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
- Columbia River at The Dalles
- Unit
- cfs
- Calculation
- Daily mean
- Last observation
- Oct 15, 2026
- Update frequency
- Daily
Now 84,800 cfs, 9% below the 5-yr median.
The Dalles discharge fell to 84,800 cfs, down 9.0% on the week. Flow is 9% below the 5-year median. The gauge ran 7.2% higher than a month ago but 14.3% lower than a year ago.
| Period | Current | Prior | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Week over week | 84,800 cfs | 93,200 cfs | -9.0% |
| Month over month | 84,800 cfs | 79,100 cfs | +7.2% |
| Year over year | 84,800 cfs | 98,900 cfs | -14.3% |
| vs 5-yr median | 84,800 cfs | 93,100 cfs | -8.9% |
| Reading | Discharge |
|---|---|
| Lowest on record for this week | 78,300 cfs |
| Median for this week | 93,100 cfs |
| Highest on record for this week | 113,000 cfs |
Previous weeks
An earlier week
Columbia River at The Dalles discharged 82,000 cfs, down 10.6% on the week. The river is running 12% below its 5-year median.
Week of Oct 7, 2026
Columbia River at The Dalles read 91,700 cfs on October 7, up 7.6% from a month ago. Flow stands at the 5-year median.
Week of Sep 29, 2026
Discharge at The Dalles reached 90,800 cfs, up 9.7% from a week earlier. The gauge is 1% below the 5-yr median. Year-over-year flow is up 12.2%.
Week of Sep 23, 2026
Discharge at The Dalles was 79,100 cfs, down 36.2% from a month earlier. Week over week flow declined 4.2%. The gauge sits 16% below the 5-yr median.
About Columbia River at The Dalles
The Columbia River at The Dalles ran 84,800 cfs on Oct 15, 2026: 84,800 cubic feet of water passing the gauge every second (what cfs means), or about 168,201 acre-feet a day. That is 9% below the 5-year median of 93,100 cfs for the date. A month earlier it ran 79,100 cfs on Sep 15, 2026, so the river has risen 7% since then. Lake Roosevelt, behind Grand Coulee Dam, is among the upstream storage that shapes this reach, and the Snake, measured at its headwaters by the Snake River above Jackson Lake gauge, joins the Columbia above this point.
USGS gage 14105700 measures the Columbia River at The Dalles, Oregon, below the confluence of the Snake and above Bonneville Dam. It integrates roughly 237,000 square miles of drainage across seven states and British Columbia, which makes it the standard index of the entire Columbia basin's water year: the January-to-July volume at The Dalles is the number the region's runoff forecasts are quoted in.
A normal year rises through the spring as the interior snowpack melts, peaks in late May or June, and recedes through the summer, with the shape smoothed by the treaty and federal storage projects upstream. Because so much of the basin is regulated, the peak here is lower and later than the natural one would be. The reading carries beyond water supply: Columbia flow at this reach sets hydropower output across the Pacific Northwest and drives the spill and flow targets that govern juvenile salmon migration through the lower river.