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Republican River

Division 1 · Water District 49 · As of 2026-08-26 11:10 MDT · 10 days ago
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Republican River on the ground — the ditches, wells, reservoirs and gages of Water District 49 · clicktap anything for its record

Browse this district’s ditches, gages, reservoirs, wells and springs as a list.

30% of normal flow, week of 2026-08-10
24 calls active on it right now

The South Fork Republican River is well below normal for early August -- 30% of normal flow. 24 calls stand against it right now; the most senior right calling dates to 1860.

9,181 well permits on file — not decreed rights
29% household or domestic use
232 ft median depth, 5,526 wells reporting

40% are constructed wells; 20% are tied to a decreed structure. A permit is the State Engineer's permission to drill and use a well, not a water right; most here are exempt household wells that sit outside the priority line and never needed a decree — three things called “well”. Turn on the Well permits chip on the map above to see where they are.

The Driller’s Atlas · Plate 2 A cross-section nobody surveyed

Every permitted well within a few miles of the line, drawn from the ground to its drilled depth as the driller filed it. The bright part of each stroke is the perforated casing — where the well actually takes water — coloured by the aquifer named on the permit. Nobody arranged these; the aquifers arrange themselves.

Hover or arrow through the strokes to read a well.

The same corridor as a table
Miles from AWells drawn Median depth (ft)With a screen Most-named aquiferNo depth filed

Bins run from end A to end B of the line. “Most-named aquifer” is the family most often named on permits in the bin, with its count; permits naming no aquifer are the majority of the file and are not a family.

Drought

Right now

This is the 52nd-driest week 33 in 89 years of record at SOUTH FORK REPUBLICAN RIVER NEAR BENKELMAN, NEBR (as of 2026-08-10; this week’s flow sits at the 30th percentile for the date). On this week’s US Drought Monitor, Kit Carson County is 24% in D1 moderate drought (2026-09-01).

Every year since 1937, week by week

Each thin row is a year at SOUTH FORK REPUBLICAN RIVER NEAR BENKELMAN, NEBR; each cell is one week’s flow ranked against the same calendar week of every other year — warm means dry for the date, blue wet, so seasonality cancels and droughts appear as warm bands. Gaps are missing record, never a dry river. Click a year to reconstruct it on the Historical tab.

The Drought Monitor’s view since 2000

Mean share of area in each class across Kit Carson, Yuma counties — the counties this district’s gages sit in, which overlap the district imperfectly. The Drought Monitor weighs soils, vegetation and local reports; it is CONTEXT beside the river’s own record above, not the water-rights picture.

This basin’s droughts, by its own record

DroughtSpanWeeks Trough percentileRecovery
the 2020-22 drought 2021-02-08 → 2026-08-10 287 9th (2022-06-20) not yet
the 2020-22 drought 2019-12-09 → 2020-10-05 43 17th (2020-05-04) not yet
the 2018 drought 2017-11-27 → 2019-10-28 100 17th (2018-04-16) not yet
the 2018 drought 2016-11-14 → 2017-11-13 52 17th (2017-05-01) not yet
unnamed dry spell 2016-01-04 → 2016-10-03 39 17th (2016-04-11) not yet
the 2012-13 drought 2012-08-20 → 2015-08-31 158 9th (2013-06-17) not yet
the 2002 drought 2000-07-24 → 2008-12-08 437 9th (2004-06-14) 47 weeks
unnamed dry spell 1978-11-27 → 1979-05-14 24 22nd (1979-02-05) 12 weeks
the 1977 drought 1976-11-01 → 1977-04-11 23 23rd (1977-01-24) 3 weeks

Detected mechanically: the 26-week smoothed percentile below the 30th for at least 20 weeks; recovered on regaining the 50th. The knobs are stated because the episode list depends on them — a different reasonable choice merges or splits episodes at the edges. Names are attached where an episode overlaps a drought Colorado already talks about.

What drought has cost here

Since 1991, federal crop insurance has paid $311,230,641 in drought-caused claims across Kit Carson, Yuma counties — 35.0% of all insured crop losses there. The worst year was 2022 ($50,095,982).

USDA crop-insurance indemnities where the recorded cause of loss is drought, summed over the counties this district's gages sit in. Counties overlap water districts imperfectly, and insured-crop claims are a floor on drought damage, not a total. Source: USDA RMA cause-of-loss files.

New to how a dry winter becomes a call on the river? Anatomy of a drought walks the chain in four minutes — snow to rivers to reservoirs to calls to the water table.

Topology cross-check: 0 parent disagreements, 11 sizable streams not on this network (vs DWR's route framework — under review)

This flow network was built mechanically; DWR's Source Water Route Framework disagrees with it in the places below. Each row is a question a human reviewer has not yet answered — not an error verdict. Checked 0 streams, 0 agree. Know this water? Tell us →

Sizable streams DWR maps here that this network does not carry:

Landsman Creek (73 mi) · Hell Creek (65 mi) · Spring Creek (60 mi) · Buffalo Creek (60 mi) · Bonny Creek (53 mi) · Sand Creek (48 mi) · Duck Creek (35 mi) · North Sand Creek (15 mi)

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