On Aug. 8 while scouting online for possible small-stream paddling possibilities, I found on the USGS Sharpsburg (Lower Antietam) web page a banner proclaiming that this gage was to be discontinued in a week. Looking around to see if other favorites might also be on the chopping block, I discovered that yes, there were four others—all in Maryland.
Remembering Chuck Walker of the USGS MD-DE-DC Science Center, who had helped us save the Hollofield (Patapsco) gage in 2021, I got in touch to learn what the story was, for a week is a frightfully short period to terminate gages that have been recording stream levels for the better part of a century. Since the name of the game here is "chicken"—finding an outside source to pony up the $15,000 per annum to run each gage, with each potential sources trying to outwait others—a week seemed far too quick to allow possible benefactors to be found.