Whitewater Forum: Text river levels

Text river levels

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Category: General
Forum Name: Whitewater Forum
Forum Discription: Open Discussion Forum. Whitewater related subjects only
URL: http://www.professorpaddle.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11965
Printed Date: 12 Jun 2025 at 5:51pm

Topic: Text river levels

Posted By: FLUID
Subject: Text river levels
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 12:17pm

I just wanted to plug Jeff Robinson's project text levels. He mentioned it in the Icicle gages thread and it's been here before but just wanted folks to know it was out there still. It's super handy when your out and about and want a quick level check plus it gives you the flow trend... i.e. flat, rising .03 hour, falling .08 hour ect.....

To use it:

text to the number : 41411

Then type your river in the text body using - level what ever river. you have to have level then a space then your river.

for example : level robe

level sky

level green

level icicle

Try it out !!! he works hard on this so lets use it.........

Replies:

Posted By: Fish
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 12:28pm

I use this free service all the time, its works when cell service doesnt, and Jeff set it up to understand nick names and abbreviations too.

Level MM ( Middle middle)

level Ernies...

Awesome!

Posted By: James
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 12:28pm

USE IT OR LOOSE IT!!!!

Posted By: DaveH
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 12:58pm

Yeah, this is a brilliant little app.
Also let's you set your favorites and get results from multiple rivers at one time.

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206-795-0617

Posted By: FLUID
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 2:14pm

I know someone with Sprint and an iPhone that has issues but it works for everyone else?? who's your carrier ?

Posted By: FLUID
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 2:25pm

See this is good.. doing some R&D for Jeff to work out the kinks !! I'm not a tech guy so maybe it is your service ??

Posted By: James
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 2:36pm

Did you pay your bill this month?

Posted By: justin
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 3:02pm

when I had Tmobile it worked, but that was a while ago.

Posted By: firewater
Date Posted: 03 May 2012 at 10:09pm

I have T mobile as well and it didn't work for me either....I have an older 3g phone

Posted By: JeffR
Date Posted: 04 May 2012 at 8:51am

Thanks for the kind words - glad you all are using and enjoying the service!

As for carriers, I know the service works on Verizon and AT&T, and that it does not currently work on Sprint or TMobile. I have to go through a middle man for the service to access the carriers' networks, and both Sprint and TMobile charge too much to the middle man for it to be worth it for him to support their networks.

Also, several people have pinged me with some similar questions, so here's some info about the service that may not be obvious:

River Names
The service can return levels from any USGS gauge in the country (and quite a few other gauge sources too). If you simply send a river name, it tries to return the gauge for the most popular section of the river. So "level green" will return the Green River near Palmer. But if you send the full name of the river, it will usually return a list of all gauges on that river. So "level green river" will return a list of all Green River gauges. Of course, this is for the entire US, so "level green river wa" will limit it somewhat.
I say "usually" and "somewhat" above because this depends on how the USGS defines the river name. For example, the North Fork of the Skokomish is listed on the USGS site as both "NF Skokomish R" and North Fork Skokomish River" depending on the gauge. The service tries to compensate for this, but there's a lot of variation.

Shortcuts
Whenever possible, I try to reduce thumb typing. Like Fish said, it knows lots of nicknames and abbreviations. Typing "level robe" instead of "level South Fork Stillaguamish" saves a lot of thumb strokes! But both work. Some other examples are:
level Tum = Tumwater (Wenatchee at Peshastin)
level LW = Little White Salmon
level MF Nook = Middle Fork of the Nooksack
level Q = Big Quilcene

Favorites
You can add up to 3 favorites at a time. It's first in, first out - so if you add a 4th favorite, the oldest one gets bumped off the list. The service tries to compress the favorites message so that you get all 3 levels in 1 message.

Web site
http://Riverlevels.us - Riverlevels.us has some more info about the service, shortcuts, gauge sources, etc. It also has a simulator where you can try it out without sending a text message.

Let me know if I'm missing any gauges! (I'm already working on adding the SF Skykomish for the Top Tye.)

- Jeff

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