When they say, “river crested at 26 feet” where are they measuring from? The bottom of the river? The ‘normal’ water level?
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Around here floods get quoted as one of two things:
One is with respect to “flood stage”. Which is a level defined as “things are about to cause damage or disruption” and then everything is reported as water levels above that. This is nice because it’s fairly easy for people to understand which is nice for say a TV news report, but sometimes can cause confusion if it varies a lot based on where exactly you are on a body of water.
The other is gauge zero. The gauge is a device that measures water levels in the river. Often times “Zero” here is something that was decided on a long time ago based on something that made sense at the time. There is usually a lot of opposition to changing where zero is set because it’s a potential source of confusion if you’re looking at historic data.
Every once in a while you also get readings from sea level. I’ve never seen one locally but I’ve heard they’re more common out in the Western US.
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