Flood Perspective is a real-time flood monitoring and risk visualization tool. It pulls together data from a variety of federal and other sources including USGS, National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and FEMA, then runs calculations to highlight which watersheds and gages are currently seeing, or are forecast to see, high-return-period flows — from a 2-year event up to the 500-year flood and beyond.
It is built for emergency managers, community officials, and anyone trying to put a developing storm into context: how does today's flow compare to the worst on record, which HUC-8 watersheds are most exposed, and where should attention be focused next. The dashboard turns scattered government datasets into a single, searchable, color-coded picture of current flood risk across the United States.
The site is run by HeyFloodGuy — a retired hydraulic engineer who spent 9 years at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and 16 years at the Federal Emergency Management Agency working on reducing flood impacts and helping communities recover from natural disasters. You can read more about that background and related projects at heyfloodguy.com .
I represent only myself on this site — not any federal, state, or local agency, and nothing here should be taken as reflecting the policies or viewpoints of any agency I once worked for. The data and calculations are provided to help you understand potential flood risks, but the data is not always perfect: gauges go down, forecasts change, and frequency curves have uncertainty. Use this as a starting point for awareness, and always defer to official sources for decisions that affect safety.
Have a question, correction, or idea? Get in touch.
Flood Perspective is a real-time flood monitoring and risk visualization tool. It pulls together data from a variety of federal and other sources including USGS, National Weather Service, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and FEMA, and performs minor calculations on that public data to help put it in perspective. There is always some risk that data reads incorrectly from the source, imports incorrectly or that calculations are not fully aligned with the source, so any decisions made — and the risks behind them — rest with the user (aka you 😉) alone.
I represent only myself on this site — not any federal, state, or local agency, and nothing here should be taken as reflecting the policies or viewpoints of any agency. The data and calculations are provided to help you understand potential flood risks, but the data is not always perfect: gauges go down, forecasts change, and frequency curves have uncertainty. Use this as a starting point for awareness, and always defer to official sources for decisions that affect safety. Observed flows on this site cover the past 10 days, and forecast flows cover the next 10 days. Clicking OK means you acknowledge these limitations and risks. Enjoy the site!