Watching the Water

Water changes.
We intend to notice.

WaterCoyote is being built to collect, organize and preserve useful public water information — helping turn scattered measurements into understandable trends.

What we're watching

Water tells a story in many different ways.

No single measurement explains water conditions. The picture emerges when supply, quality, weather, groundwater and infrastructure are viewed together — and followed over time.

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Water Supply

Reservoir levels, river flow, storage, withdrawals and changing demand.

Water Quality

Public measurements, contaminants, advisories and indicators of changing water conditions.

Drought

Dry conditions, rainfall deficits, soil conditions and the pressure they place on available water.

Rivers & Streams

Flow rates, gauges, seasonal changes and unusual movement in the waterways around us.

Groundwater

Aquifers and wells provide water quietly beneath the surface — sometimes for generations.

Long-Term Trends

Today's number matters. A year, decade or generation of numbers can tell us much more.

More than snapshots

Today's reading is useful. History makes it valuable.

Water information is often published as individual measurements: today's reservoir level, today's drought map, today's river flow or today's water-quality result.

WaterCoyote's longer-term objective is to preserve those observations so changes become easier to recognize.

Where is water improving? Where is it declining? What is normal for this time of year? And when does something stop looking normal?

Supply
Is available water rising or falling?
Quality
Are measurements changing over time?
Geography
Where are conditions improving or deteriorating?
History
How does today compare with the past?
The long game

Some datasets become more valuable simply because someone kept them.

Public water information exists in thousands of places. Some of it is easy to find today and difficult to reconstruct years later.

WaterCoyote is interested not only in what the water says today — but what today's data will mean after we've been watching it for years.

That accumulated history can help reveal seasonal patterns, unusual events, persistent deterioration, recovery and long-term change.

Why the coyote?

Observant. Adaptable. Persistent.

A coyote survives by paying attention to its surroundings. It notices change, adapts to conditions and keeps moving.

WaterCoyote is intended to do something similar with water data: keep watching, keep collecting and notice when the landscape begins to change.

Different flows here.