Skip to main content
Glossary
data

CFS

Cubic Feet per Second — the unit USGS gauges report flow in. One bucket of water (1 cubic foot) passing a fixed point every second.

Also calledCubic feet per second · Cubic-feet-per-second

CFS is the standard flow unit on every USGS streamgage in the country. A small mountain creek might run 30–80 CFS. A storied trout river like the Madison runs 800–1500 CFS. The Mississippi at New Orleans is ~600,000 CFS.

For a given river, what matters isn't the absolute number — it's where today's reading falls inside the river's fishable band. FishCast's flow score tells you that directly: same 320 CFS reading is "perfect" on the Provo and "raging" on a small Catskill freestone.