Hydrohistorian
← Basin trends · All gages in this district
Skyline Ditch at Chambers Lake
Transbasin diversion gage · SKYDCLCO · USGS 06746500 · Division 1 · Water District 48 · Larimer County
Live gage at DWR ↗ · USGS monitoring location ↗ · Download daily record (CSV)
Source DWR administrative record · verify at DWR station ↗ Source Independent agency measurement · verify at USGS ↗ Source Our computation, no independent reference · computed here from the screened record
What this gage meters
This is not a natural stream record. The Skyline Ditch moves water from Laramie River headwaters (Div 1, WD 48) into Chambers Lake, Cache la Poudre (Div 1, WD 3), operated by Water Supply & Storage Co. — so this record is a ledger of those deliveries. Trends here reflect operational and demand decisions, not the basin's hydrology, and the basin trends page marks it accordingly (⇆). All of Colorado's curated transbasin diversions are collected at /transbasin.
The record
Readings come from the weekly-refreshed cache, never fetched live — the date beside the value says exactly how fresh it is. The live gage is one click up.
Annual flow & trend
Chart: annual mean flow at Skyline Ditch at Chambers Lake, water years 1922 to 2025. The measured record is decreasing at -0.82 cubic feet per second per decade. A Pettitt changepoint is detected around 1975. The underlying yearly values are available as a CSV download linked at the top of this page.
This gage measures the Skyline Ditch, water carried across the Continental Divide. It is taken from Laramie River headwaters (Div 1, WD 48) and delivered to Chambers Lake, Cache la Poudre (Div 1, WD 3) — so what this gage reads leaves one river basin for good and arrives in another.
The two ends: Skyline Ditch Release Structure (receiving, on Joe Wright Creek)
- Decree in case 17CW3057 ↗ · imaged 2020-10-09 · filed under the receiving end, Skyline Ditch Release Structure
- Decree in case 18CW3076 ↗ · imaged 2020-10-07 · filed under the receiving end, Skyline Ditch Release Structure
- Decree in case 11CW0265 ↗ · imaged 2015-07-21 · filed under the receiving end, Skyline Ditch Release Structure
- Decree in case 03CW0421 ↗ · imaged 2012-05-08 · filed under the receiving end, Skyline Ditch Release Structure
- Decree in case 03CW0422 ↗ · imaged 2011-06-16 · filed under the receiving end, Skyline Ditch Release Structure
- Decree in case W9385 ↗ · imaged 2005-08-24 · filed under the receiving end, Skyline Ditch Release Structure
The ditch’s mapped channel is drawn on the map below where the USGS has surveyed it. Every crossing →
Where it sits
Location as DWR records it (3.0).
Provenance
DWR station abbreviation SKYDCLCO; recorded station name “SKYLINE DITCH AT CHAMBERS LAKE”; operated by DWR. Daily flows from the DWR HydroBase snapshot plus CDSS REST updates, refreshed on the weekly cycle. Trend statistics are Mann-Kendall (Hamed-Rao corrected) with Sen's slope in native cfs, the same numbers as the basin Trends tab.