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USGS 04101370, Judy Creek near South Bend, Indiana · peak-streamflow file retrieved November 11, 2026
The gauge is USGS station 04101370 — styled "JUDY Creek Near South Bend, IN" in the federal record, the old spelling the record already note — on Juday Creek near its mouth. Its record runs: discharge from October 1, 1992 to July 8, 2026; gage height from October 1, 2007 to July 8, 2026; stream water-level elevation above NAVD 1988 from January 2, 2023. As of November 10, 2026 the creek at the gauge was flowing at 10 cubic feet per second, gage height 2.31 feet, water-surface elevation 677.3 feet NAVD 1988, receding 8 percent over 24 hours; the ten-day average was 10 cfs with a ten-day peak of 11 cfs, and the wettest year in the summary record was 2019 at an average of 30 cfs (Snoflo's rendering of the USGS feed, November 2026).
The crest series below is the gauge's own annual peak-streamflow file (USGS NWIS, retrieved November 11, 2026), printed as a river record. Two readings govern the table. First, the peak discharge and the peak gage height of a water year are not always the same event: in many years this section's maximum gage height is a winter backwater reading (ice or downstream backwater, this section's code 1), higher than the gage height at the peak discharge — those backwater maxima are noted where the file gives them. Second, several of this section's printed "maximum gage height" values in the later years appear in the retrieved file as bare numbers inconsistent with the gauge's foot scale (1300, 1115, 1530, 1345); they are printed as printed, flagged [sic], and not silently corrected or dropped. Gaps in the table are gaps in the file, not certified no-flood years: the file carries no peak rows for water years 2010, 2012, or 2026, and the 1994, 2002-era and 2022 water years are represented only by the autumn entries that open them.
| Date | Peak discharge | Gage height at peak | Notes from the file |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1969-12-31 20:00 | — | 3.10 ft | Estimated (code 5); no discharge value |
| 1993-06-09 | 226 cfs | 3.39 ft | |
| 1993-10-17 | 130 cfs | 3.00 ft | |
| 1995-08-04 | 90.0 cfs | — | Maximum daily average; estimate (codes 1, 2) |
| 1996-05-17 | 130 cfs | 3.18 ft | |
| 1997-02-22 | 68.0 cfs | 2.74 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 4.59 ft on 1997-01-22, backwater |
| 1998-08-06 | 80.0 cfs | 2.84 ft | |
| 1999-04-23 | 68.0 cfs | — | Maximum daily average; estimate |
| 2000-04-20 | 72.0 cfs | — | Maximum daily average; estimate |
| 2001-02-25 | 34.0 cfs | 2.36 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 4.62 ft on 2001-01-07, backwater |
| 2002-05-12 | 93.0 cfs | 2.94 ft | |
| 2003-05-09 | 49.0 cfs | 2.62 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 3.76 ft on 2003-02-17, backwater |
| 2004-06-12 | 116 cfs | 3.08 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 3.13 ft on 2004-01-10, backwater |
| 2005-02-16 | 32.0 cfs | — | Maximum daily average; water-year maximum gage 2.97 ft on 2005-01-13, backwater |
| 2006-03-13 | 21.0 cfs | — | Maximum daily average; water-year maximum gage 2.91 ft on 2006-02-20, backwater |
| 2007-04-25 | 62.0 cfs | 2.59 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 2.97 ft on 2006-12-01, backwater |
| 2008-09-15 | 249 cfs | 3.65 ft | |
| 2009-03-11 | 120 cfs | 3.21 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 3.49 ft on 2008-12-25, backwater |
| 2009-10-30 | 69.0 cfs | 2.62 ft | |
| 2011-04-28 | 75.0 cfs | 2.94 ft | |
| 2011-12-15 | 62.0 cfs | 2.85 ft | |
| 2013-04-19 | 81.0 cfs | 3.05 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 3.39 ft on 2013-01-26 |
| 2014-06-24 | 53.0 cfs | 2.80 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 5.24 ft on 2014-02-18, backwater — the highest gage height in the file |
| 2015-05-31 | 59.0 cfs | 2.78 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 3.74 ft on 2015-02-20, backwater |
| 2016-08-16 | 331 cfs | 3.83 ft | Second-highest peak discharge in the file |
| 2017-03-01 20:00 | 95.3 cfs | 3.10 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage 3.75 ft on 2016-12-21, backwater |
| 2018-02-21 12:00 | 500 cfs | 4.34 ft | Estimated (code 2) — the record peak discharge in the file |
| 2019-05-01 03:45 | 90.5 cfs | 3.04 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage entry printed as "1300" [sic — as printed in the NWIS file], 3.57 ft, on 2019-02-02, backwater |
| 2020-05-18 18:30 | 84.3 cfs | 3.02 ft | |
| 2021-06-26 16:45 | 121 cfs | 3.25 ft | |
| 2021-10-26 02:15 | 86.9 cfs | 2.99 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage entry printed as "1115" [sic], 3.12 ft, on 2022-01-27, backwater |
| 2023-07-29 01:30 | 133 cfs | 3.34 ft | |
| 2024-01-26 13:30 | 117 cfs | 3.56 ft | Estimate; water-year maximum gage entry printed as "1530" [sic], 3.98 ft, on 2024-01-16, backwater |
| 2025-04-03 03:30 | 98.3 cfs | — | Water-year maximum gage entry printed as "1345" [sic], 3.33 ft, on 2025-01-15 |
The series reads as a small creek's series should: a groundwater-fed base flow near 10 cfs, annual peaks mostly between 50 and 135 cfs, and three events standing clear of the rest — September 15, 2008 (249 cfs), August 16, 2016 (331 cfs), and the record, February 21, 2018 (500 cfs, estimated, at 4.34 feet). A conflict with the secondary rendering is printed whole: Snoflo's Juday Creek page states "Max recorded 306 cfs." The NWIS peak file's maximum is the 500 cfs of February 21, 2018. The two figures are not reconciled; the NWIS file, as the source record, is the one the table prints.
The record crest belongs to a basin-wide event, and its river-record facts — kept separate here from any disaster narrative — are these. On February 21, 2018, Juday Creek peaked at its estimated 500 cfs. The same storm put the St. Joseph River at South Bend to a historic crest of 12.7 feet on February 22, 2018, with a USGS peak flow of 25,300 cfs at the Niles gauge — 14.5 billion gallons a day through South Bend, in the City of South Bend's post-flooding investigation (Lawson-Fisher Associates, presented August 20, 2018). Niles crested at 17.33 feet on February 22, above its 15-foot major-flood level. The investigation classed February 2018 as a 500-year (0.2 percent annual-chance) event: some 30 inches of snow on the ground by February 17 (almost 15 inches above normal), then 3.75 inches of rain on February 20 — a single-day record — in a month that took over 8 inches of rain against a previous record of 5. The National Weather Service's account (North Webster office, January 2019) adds the regional frame: the snowiest start to February on record at South Bend, 4 to 6 inches of rain on February 19–21 — over three times the monthly normal — many rivers at record crests, a few exceeding previous records by nearly 2 feet, a disaster declaration for nine northern Indiana counties, and federal disaster assistance for five. The contrast event is August 2016: about 8.5 inches of rain in 12 hours, localised flooding in the upper watersheds, 5.5 billion gallons a day through South Bend — and, on Juday's own gauge, the 331 cfs of August 16, 2016, the creek's second-highest peak. One limit is printed with the series: the National Weather Service's flood-stage thresholds (action, minor, moderate, major) for this gauge exist but their values were not printed in the sources reached; their settling source is the NWS Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service page for the station, and no threshold value is asserted here.