Beware of the Cacapon Virtual Gage

If you are thinking about a run on the classic, scenic Cacapon River, be advised that the virtual gage result on the American Whitewater Cacapon page is out of whack, according to page-minder Tony Allred. This means that the gage may be telling you the run is above recommended when it is actually fine; or it might be telling you that the run is fine when it is actually too low.

Apparently the web site code is not correctly implementing the desired algorithm, which Tony developed. What he suspects is that the math operators are malfunctioning, so addition in the algorithm is being supported but not subtraction, multiplication, or division.

If Tony is right, then any AW virtual gages relying on anything other than addition also unreliable. 

As far as nearby paddling goes, only the Cacapon is affected. The virtual gage for Gaither Gorge (South Branch of the Patapsco) is OK. And the virtual gage for the Lower Gunpowder is OK as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. That is, Tony explains, if it says not running, then the river is not running, but if it says running, you still need to know if water is going over the Loch Raven Dam. Unrelated to the web site glitch as well, Tony advises against using the virtual gage for the Lost, in whose algorithm he has lost faith.

AW's coders will investigate. In the meantime, for a do-it-yourself solution to the Cacapon problem, Tony has spelled put the actual math on the AW Cacapon page. You can go yourself to the USGS pages and get the Brandywine, Great Cacapon, and Cootes Store levels (in feet, not CFS), and use the formula that is spelled out: Cacapon=((Brandywine ÷ 3) + (Great Cacapon ÷ 3) + (Cootes Store ÷ 3)) − 1.2. Consult the recommendations given on the page for runnable levels, and you can see if the result from the formula corresponds to too low, OK, or too high.