BUFFALO RIVER LEVELS
A live read on the floatability of the Buffalo National River.
- CLIENT
- Buffalo National River Partners
- TYPE
- Volunteer project
- COVERAGE
- Five river gauges
01. THE PROJECT
Buffalo National River Partners imagined an easy-to-read chart for the BNR water levels. The page covers all the official water gauge locations, turning gauge readings into an answer to "is the river floatable?"
02. MY PART
I built the page as a volunteer project. The organization supplied the visual design; I implemented it, wired up the live data, and integrated it into their site. I still host and maintain the backend that keeps the readings current.
03. UNDER THE HOOD
The backend publishes a small JSON feed with the latest data, gathered by scraping USGS services. The public page requests that feed and displays the chart based on the results.
The backend could not be hosted alongside the site because the site runs on Squarespace. We shoehorned in some JavaScript to make the separately hosted feed work.