Arkansas Creek Monitor — Changelog

Version 2026.7.1.2 — July 1, 2026

The Buffalo River Watershed Study has wrapped up after 122 days — a month longer than planned — and its page is now a finished, browsable archive.

The Buffalo Study page (linked from the tools menu) now opens with a short "Study concluded" summary of what the 122-day experiment learned: how the same inch of rain moves the river much more when the ground is already wet, how the upstream-to-downstream cascade is timed (about 10 hours St. Joe→Harriet), each gauge's personality, and the record June 22 flash flood that anchored the extreme end. (The study ran an unusually wet June a full month past its planned 90 days — that wet stretch delivered its most valuable data.)
The daily archive and the final hypothesis document are still fully browsable — now clearly marked as a frozen record rather than a live-updating one.
Nothing you rely on for live conditions changes. The study's findings were folded into the everyday forecasts (watershed alerts, rise likelihoods, downstream propagation), and those keep running exactly as before.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: the study's nightly Claude Opus narrative stream was retired on 2026-07-01 (cron study_daily_analysis.py --no-opus), ending the project's only per-night external API cost; the local qwen3.6:27b stream continues a no-cost nightly pulse on ScriptPi for periodic hand-review. /study/ pages are frozen at Day 122 (June 30, 2026); the concluded banner + per-page frozen-archive notes are served from dashboard.py (study_index/study_hypothesis/study_daily). See ARCHITECTURE §4.7 + §16 item 16 (version 2026.7.1.2).

Version 2026.7.1.1 — July 1, 2026

Arkansas Creek Intelligence has its own web address now: arcreekintel.com.

The site now lives at its own dedicated domain — arcreekintel.com. Every page is reachable there: the home creek list, the individual creek and watershed pages, the historical reports, and the scorecard — all of it, exactly as before, just at a shorter address that's all about the creeks.
Your existing bookmarks still work. The old web address keeps pointing to the very same site during the transition, so nothing you've saved will break. Going forward, arcreekintel.com is the one to save and share.

Version 2026.6.30.1 — June 30, 2026

New page: the Illinois River and the Upper Illinois Water Trail.

There's now a dedicated page for the Illinois River at /illinois/. It tracks the Hwy 16 gauge near Siloam Springs for the 15.5-mile Upper Illinois Water Trail (Chamber Springs → WOKA), with float levels — too low under 150 cfs, low-but-floatable 150–250, optimal 250–2,500, above-recommended over 2,500. (Those bands come from the local paddling community; the AGFC's official 200–1,000 cfs range is noted on the page too.)
The Upper Illinois Water Trail also shows as a live creek card on the home page and the gauges list, with its current float level — so it's an official entry in the creek lineup, not just a standalone page.
Upstream gauges give you a head start. Because the Illinois drains a big watershed, the page also watches the gauges on Osage Creek (at Elm Springs and Cave Springs) and at Savoy — they typically come up several hours before that water reaches the trail, so a bump upstream is your early warning. The downstream Watts, OK gauge (below WOKA) gets its own card and 24-hour graph as well.
A watershed rainfall map and forecast. Rainfall is broken out sub-basin by sub-basin, above and below Hwy 16, each with a 24-hour rain-forecast column, plus an experimental "chance the river rises" forecast for the run. (Experimental.)
A "⚠ heavy rain below Hwy 16" caution for the rare storm that soaks the lower river toward WOKA without showing up on the Hwy 16 decision gauge.
A new historical page at /illinois/historical/ — how much of the year the river spends in each float range (it sits in "optimal" about 62% of the time), the biggest floods on record (April 2017 peaked at 148,750 cfs), and a catalog of all 350 storms that have pushed it past 1,000 cfs over the last 23 years, with the rainfall behind each recent one.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: new ScriptPi basin /home/dave/illinois/ (config + assembler + multi-gauge fetch / read-qpe / weather+QPF, cloned from Big Piney with Buffalo's signal_for multi-gauge pattern grafted on), cron every 15 min → illinois_output.json. Full history collected to the harness research/illinois_*: 8 USGS gauges' complete records + hourly MRMS per-HUC12 QPE 2014→present over the 21 HUC12s above Watts. Empirical illinois_below block trained on the above-Hwy-16 basin (calibrated_table.json + lookup index + empirical_config.yaml). Upstream→Hwy-16 propagation lags from storm-pulse cross-correlation (Savoy 6–8 h, Osage 8–13 h, Mud 11–16 h; Watts +3–5 h downstream). New DMZPi routes /illinois/ + /illinois/historical/. See ARCHITECTURE §4.9c (version 2026.6.30.1).

Version 2026.6.29.7 — June 29, 2026

The rainfall forecast on the five creek pages now gives you an honest percentage instead of a vague "rise likely."

On the Cossatot, Richland, Hailstone, Mulberry, and Big Piney pages, the Empirical Forecast now reads like "~30% chance of rising to floatable in the next 6–12 hours" instead of a yes/no "WATCH — rise likely." The old version cried wolf: across 2,314 real rainstorms back to 2014, its "rise likely" was a false alarm 60% of the time. The new number is calibrated against what the creek actually did — and it holds up every year.
When the new forecast says a number, the creek does it about that often:

When the new forecast says a percentage, the creek rose that often: said under-10% rose 4%, 10-25% rose 17%, 25-50% rose 49%, over-50% rose 80%

Why it's better: the old engine only knew how much rain usually fell before a creek came up — it never learned how often that same rain just soaked in and did nothing. The new one knows both, so a heavy rain that usually drains is reported as the modest chance it really is, not a false alarm. It also quietly leans a little higher when the ground is already saturated and lower in a dry spell. (Experimental — it's an honest probability, not a guarantee: a 30% morning can still come up, and an 80% one can still fizzle.)

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: new calibrated engine (empirical_forecast/calibrated.py + calibrated_table.json — denominator-corrected P(rise | rain, soil) over the full 2014-2026 MRMS+USGS record) feeds the headline in empirical_predict.py, with a per-basin warm rolling factor off the local settled archives. Boxley (no page) unchanged; empirical stays off Facebook per standing choice (Watersheds only). Full research + validation in the harness research/empirical_recalibration/ (REPORT.md). ARCHITECTURE §4.13/§16-11 updated.

Version 2026.6.29.6 — June 29, 2026

Added a privacy policy page.

There's now a privacy policy at /privacy. The short version: you can use the site without an account or handing us any personal information; we run no ads, no analytics of our own, and never sell anyone's data. It's there so our (minimal) information practices are documented in one place — and so the Facebook page can link to a real policy.

Version 2026.6.29.5 — June 29, 2026

Our forecast "report card" got clearer and more honest, and a couple of predictions were tuned based on what it's been telling us.

The Scorecard page (/scorecard) is easier to read and harder to mislead. The recession-countdown table now hides the dozens of barely-started rows so you only see the gauges with enough data to mean something, and each predictor's "bias" now shows its average and its typical (median) miss side by side — so a single freak event (like the June 22 flash flood) no longer makes an otherwise-solid predictor look broken. (Experimental, self-grading page.)
The Buffalo "AI Rainfall Event Analysis" card now stands down as the river falls. Once the Ponca gauge is clearly past its crest and dropping, the card eases its flood-risk number and wording back down instead of staying pinned near "Flood" through the recession — so it stops over-warning about water that's already on its way out. (Experimental.)
Big Piney's "Above Longpool" run no longer shows a "time to too low" countdown that never panned out. That upper Class II+ stretch settles so close to its too-low mark that the countdown to it was unreliable, so we've switched it off for that section — the "low but floatable" and "optimal" countdowns there are unchanged.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: this came out of the weekly scorecard / Signal-digest review. score_all.py now emits a per-predictor median error, min-n-gates the recession rows (MIN_RECESSION_GRADED), and adds a recession timing-bias flag; ponca_analog.py decays the dominant-driver flood-floor toward the raw k-NN once Ponca is past crest (raw values still logged for backtest); big_piney_assemble.py had recession_baseline support restored to its ported compute_recession (the port had dropped it) and above_longpool was given recession_baseline: 2.0. The empirical engine's over-warning (also visible on the scorecard) is a deeper rebuild blocked on an offline tool — tracked, not yet changed. See ARCHITECTURE §4.13 / §16-11 (version 2026.6.29.5).

Version 2026.6.29.4 — June 29, 2026

Creek Intelligence is now on Facebook — follow Arkansas Creek Intelligence for automatic creek alerts and a weekend forecast.

We launched an Arkansas Creek Intelligence Facebook page, and it updates itself. When watersheds start coming up after rain, an alert bot posts a watershed alert to the page automatically — every creek crossing into Watch, Warning, or Flood that hour bundled into a single post, so you get one clean heads-up instead of a stream of notifications. It only speaks up when something new is developing or getting worse, so the page stays quiet between events. (Experimental — our Signal alert group is still the fastest, real-time channel.)
New Weekend Creek Forecast, every Friday at 3 PM. A single post for weekend paddlers: the creeks running optimal right now that should still be runnable through the weekend (based on how fast each one is dropping), a short list of marginal "catch-it-early" runs, and a heads-up on any rain headed our way in the next 24 hours. (Experimental.)
Why a Facebook page: it puts the same intelligence the dashboard already computes in front of paddlers where they already are — the alerts come to you, no page to keep checking.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: new creek-social toolset on the harness server — creek_social.py mirrors the watershed alerts to Facebook (fully decoupled from ScriptPi: it reads the same predictor_output.json the dashboard already produces, replays the alert engine's new/escalation logic against its own state, and posts via the Facebook Graph API), weekend_forecast.py (Friday cron; recession-based "holds through the weekend" filter), and announce.py (auto-posts a short feature announcement to the page whenever we ship a user-facing change — a new shipping convention now in CLAUDE.md §8 + ARCHITECTURE §4.2). Posts are deliberately link-free and bot-signed.

Version 2026.6.29.2 — June 29, 2026

The Buffalo Study pages now correctly report the June 22 flash flood — it had been mistakenly logged as a "data gap"

On the experimental Buffalo Study pages (/study/), June 22 is now described accurately as the biggest event of the study so far: a dry-ground flash flood that set records up in the headwaters — Boxley, Ponca, and Pruitt all hit study-record levels — then faded to just below flood stage by the time it reached St. Joe / Grinder Ferry. The running write-up had previously called this stretch a "data gap" and guessed it was only a moderate event, because the night-of analysis that captured the flood never made it into the rolling summary. Both the gap and the wrong guess are now corrected, with the real numbers.
Why it matters: it's the clearest example yet of a pattern these pages track — an upstream-only flood loses most of its punch crossing the dry middle of the watershed before it reaches the lower river (the same idea behind today's earlier propagation-card fix). Still experimental research pages, not the live gauges.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: two fixes to the nightly Buffalo Study analyzer (study_daily_analysis.py) plus a data backfill. (1) The transfer-ratio validator was QPE-gated — its 2,000 cfs/in cap had unconditionally false-rejected the model's correct 06-22 headwater numbers (Ponca 2,756 cfs/in matched the deterministic truth card), silently dropping that night's calibration; the cap now applies only on low-rainfall days, where the frame-override artifact it guards against actually occurs. (2) The Opus output cap was raised 40000→56000 after the daily+thinking+hypothesis rewrite pinned at the cap for five straight nights (06-21..06-25, incl. the flood), freezing the rolling hypothesis. (3) The 06-22 study-record flood was backfilled into both the qwen knowledge.md calibration tables and the Opus hypothesis.md (now live on /study/), from the truth card + the existing night-of Opus daily; logged in analysis/curation_audit.md. The qwen-only (--no-opus) cutover stays deferred — even post-fix, qwen still drops a gauge on the complex flood night. See ARCHITECTURE §4.7 + §16 item 16.

Version 2026.6.29.1 — June 29, 2026

More accurate downstream forecasts: the St. Joe / Grinder Ferry propagation card no longer overshoots when the rain falls up high

The Buffalo page's "River Rise & Propagation Analysis" card now looks at where the rain actually fell before estimating how big St. Joe / Grinder Ferry will get. During the big June 22 flood the rain landed almost entirely up in the headwaters (around Boxley and Ponca), and the flood wave simply rolled downstream and faded — St. Joe ended up cresting right around its flood stage. The old card had assumed the rain fell across the whole watershed and forecast St. Joe two-to-three times too high — it read like a catastrophic flood when the river actually came up to about flood stage. That's the gap this release closes.
What you'll notice: when a rise is concentrated up high and the middle of the watershed stays dry, the card now expects St. Joe to come up roughly in line with Ponca — the wave attenuates as it travels — instead of several times higher. When rain falls across the whole basin it still calls the big amplified crest, because that's when St. Joe genuinely does run several times above Ponca. Pruitt's forecast is unchanged (it was already accurate). Arrival-time estimates are a little tighter too.
Still experimental — it's a downstream estimate given as a range, meant to help with gravel-bar timing; always check it against the live gauges.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: the St. Joe magnitude in ponca_analog.py build_propagation() was a fixed basin-wide amplification (≈2.9× Ponca) applied unconditionally; on an upper-concentrated event the wave routes through the dry 1,342 km² intervening basin and attenuates (~0.9×), so the constant over-predicted 2–4× (6-22: card 19–33k, actual 7.9k). Recalibrated against 152 historical Ponca events (2014–2026) from the local buffalo_huc_qpe + buffalo_gauges archives (research/buffalo_propagation_calibration/, with REPORT.md + figures). St. Joe is now a rainfall-distribution + antecedent conditioned log-linear model (SJ_MODEL) reading the upper-vs-intervening qpe_24hr ratio and the intervening 7-day antecedent — all already in buffalo_output.json — with a crest band floored at the routed wave (0.85×) and the reach's current flow. Leave-one-out CV cut the upper-concentrated bias from +46% to ≈0; out-of-sample on 6-22 it predicts St. Joe 8.5k–11.9k–16.9k (lower bound ≈ actual). Pruitt kept at ~1.13× (rain-insensitive, 11-yr confirmed); peak-to-peak lags re-derived. ScriptPi-only — render_propagation_card() reads only the kept crest-band fields, so no DMZPi change. See ARCHITECTURE §4.6 + §16 item 15.

Version 2026.6.24.8 — June 24, 2026

New: a 24-hour gauge chart on the Cossatot, Richland, and Hailstone pages

Each of those three pages now shows a 24-hour hydrograph right under the big gauge reading — a simple line chart of the gauge's last 24 hours, so you can see at a glance whether it spiked and how it's receding, the way you would on the USGS site.
The runnable range is shaded right into the chart (red = too low, yellow = low but floatable, green = optimal, blue = above recommended), so you can watch the river climb up into the good range and fall back out of it — not just a bare line. The peak is labeled and "now" is marked with a dot.
It's a lightweight built-in chart (no third-party widgets) and fills in live as new readings come in every 15 minutes. When a creek is sitting below every threshold, it just reads all-red ("too low") with the trend visible.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: each physics-basin assembler now emits gauge.readings_24h (a [[epoch, value], …] array of the last 24 h, ~96 pts at 15-min) via a build_readings_24h() helper — Cossatot/Richland stitch yesterday+today's daily height files to span midnight, Hailstone uses its already-rolling cfs buffer from creeks/gauge_data.json. dashboard.py gained render_hydrograph(), an inline-SVG renderer (tier bands + line + peak + "now" dot, fully self-contained, no chart library), placed under the gauge card on all three pages. Display-only, no DMZPi compute (same contract as the HTML tables and Leaflet maps). See ARCHITECTURE §5.4.

Version 2026.6.24.7 — June 24, 2026

The Scorecard now flags what needs attention — and reports its own drift weekly

The Scorecard page now opens with a "Needs attention" box that calls out, in plain terms, where the predictors are drifting — e.g. "the rise-likelihood engine over-warns on Boxley / Mulberry / Richland," "the heaviest-rain band is less reliable than the band below it," "two crest predictors are off-calibration." The page tells you what to look at instead of making you hunt for it.
A weekly summary now goes out automatically (behind the scenes, to the operator) so the system surfaces its own drift without anyone opening the page — closing the loop on self-checking without manual review.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: score_all.py now computes a flags array (min-n-guarded: empirical over-warn ≥70% no-rise at n≥20, band inversion above_p75 vs. p50_to_p75, physics within-±20% <50% at n≥15, Ponca override-vs-raw flood-Brier gap, recession never-reached ≥60% once graded) into scorecard.json; /scorecard renders the "Needs attention" box from it. New prediction_eval/scorecard_digest.py (weekly cron Mon 07:30 Central) reads the scorecard, formats a per-family accuracy snapshot + the flags, and sends a Signal DM via the existing signal_config.yaml (same signal-cli plumbing as scp_alert / data_age_alert). This is Phase 3 of the prediction-logging initiative — the self-checking / feedback half. The harness-consolidation refactor was deliberately deferred (a risky change to working cron code with no user benefit). See ARCHITECTURE §4.13 + §16-14 + §7.2.

Version 2026.6.24.6 — June 24, 2026

Scorecard now also tracks the downstream-propagation forecast (recording started)

The Scorecard page has a new "Downstream Propagation" section. When Ponca rises, the system predicts whether — and how big — a bump reaches Pruitt and then St. Joe / Grinder Ferry, and how many hours after Ponca peaks. Those predictions are now recorded and will be graded: did a noticeable bump actually come, was it the right size, and did it arrive in the predicted window?
Nothing to show yet — like the Buffalo rise engine, this only logs during an actual Ponca rise, and a downstream crest can take most of a day to play out, so the first graded results appear after the next event. With this, every live forecast the system makes is now on the self-grading loop.
Experimental, like the rest of the Scorecard.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: ponca_analog.py now folds the per-reach propagation block (lag window, crest band, bump/no-bump flag, current flow) into each ponca_analog_history.jsonl record — the record step the predictions had been missing. New prediction_eval/propagation_eval.py settles each matured event two-stage: it finds Ponca's actual peak from buffalo_study/data/gauges, then for Pruitt (07055680) and St. Joe (07056000) grades the bump/no-bump call (crest ≥ 1.25× baseline & +50 cfs), the magnitude-band hit, and the timing window relative to Ponca's peak — using the cycle nearest Ponca's peak as the representative prediction. A --selftest (10 checks) validates the logic. score_all.py folds the settle in and adds a propagation block; /scorecard renders it; Coverage flips the propagation forecast to "graded." This completes Phase 2 of the prediction-logging initiative — every live predictor family is now recorded and graded. See ARCHITECTURE §4.13 + §16-14.

Version 2026.6.24.5 — June 24, 2026

The Ponca "AI Analysis" cards now read like a person — and the numbers make sense

Rewrote both Ponca AI cards (the rainfall outlook and the downstream propagation card on the Buffalo page) to read in plain language for a casual paddler — and, more importantly, fixed the numbers.
No more peaks below the current level. The rainfall card had been quoting a "typical peak" from past storms even when the river was already past it (e.g. "peak ~364 cfs" while sitting at 415). It now floors the peak by what the river has actually done — so it says things like "it's near the top for this storm, ~431, and shouldn't climb much more."
Propagation numbers fixed. The downstream card was predicting crests below where Pruitt and St. Joe already sat (e.g. "St. Joe will crest at 948–1,638" while it was already at 1,820). It now models the added bump the Ponca rise puts on top of each downstream gauge's current flow — and when that bump is small (a light rain), it plainly says "no noticeable change downstream" instead of quoting a fake crest window.
Plainer, less robotic. Out: "no deterministic watershed rainfall alerts or upstream triggers firing." In: a short, plain read of whether the creek's coming up, how high, and when. The safety behavior is unchanged — when heavy rain hits the feeder creeks or the upstream river floods, the card still leads with that and leans into the bigger outcome.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: in buffalo_dashboard/ponca_analog.py, both qwen system prompts were slimmed and rewritten for a casual-paddler audience (no jargon, fact-fed, model reasons rather than recites) with one hard rule — never state a peak/crest at or below the current flow. build_propagation() now models est_crest = reach_current + (Ponca rise above baseline) × amplification, floored at the reach's current value (was Ponca_flow × amp absolute, which fell below a downstream gauge's own flow whenever Ponca was small relative to that reach's drainage), plus a significant / added_bump_cfs gate so small pulses read "minor bump, no noticeable change." A qualitative 6-hour trend word (holding steady / creeping up / rising steadily / rising fast / easing down / dropping fast) keeps the model from overstating a slow creep. The deterministic override floors (upstream Boxley wave, heavy-rain, watershed-feeder alerts) are unchanged — only their narration. See ARCHITECTURE §4.6.

Version 2026.6.24.4 — June 24, 2026

Scorecard now tracks the Buffalo rise engine (recording started)

The Scorecard page has a new "Buffalo Rise Engine" section. Behind the Buffalo dashboard, the system makes a per-gauge "a rise is coming" nowcast (slight / moderate / large, with a timing window) from local rain and upstream propagation. Until now those predictions were computed, shown indirectly, and then thrown away every 15 minutes — never checked. They're now recorded and will be graded on whether each gauge actually rose, and whether it rose within the predicted window.
Nothing to show yet — the rise engine only fires during rain events, and it's dry right now, so the section reads "recording started, no events captured yet." The first results appear after the next storm. (This was the largest prediction surface that had been completely untracked.)
Experimental, like the rest of the Scorecard.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: new prediction_eval/buffalo_predictions_archive.py (modeled on recession_archive.py) — --record on a 15-min cron (:09,:24,:39,:54, debounced) logs each active predictions[gauge].combined_category from buffalo_output.json (with timing window + current value) to buffalo_ledger/<date>.jsonl; --settle grades vs. the gauge's actual discharge rise over [generated_at, timing_high + 18 h] (rose if peak ≥ 1.25× start AND ≥ +30 cfs → records rise magnitude, hours-to-peak, timing-in-window; else no_rise / censored); --score aggregates. A --selftest (14 synthetic checks) validates the logic since production is dry. score_all.py folds the settle in and adds a buffalo_rise block; /scorecard renders it; Coverage splits Buffalo into "rise predictions: graded" and "flood_risk + propagation_alerts: not yet logged." Magnitude is captured per category (categories derive from rainfall, not gauge rise) so the rainfall→rise mapping calibrates over time. ARCHITECTURE §4.13 + §16-14 + §7.1.

Version 2026.6.24.3 — June 24, 2026

Scorecard now grades the Ponca "AI Rainfall Event Analysis"

The Scorecard page now scores the Ponca AI Rainfall Event Analysis (the orange card on the Buffalo page). Every call it makes during a rain event is now recorded and later graded against what the Ponca gauge actually did — so you can see how often it gets the size of an event right. Until now it was logged but never scored.
What it shows: how often the predicted class (Fizzle / Moderate / High / Flood) matched the actual crest (exactly, and within one level), how close the "typical peak" estimate landed, and how well-calibrated the flood-risk % has been. On the ~4 weeks logged so far it gets the class within one level 95% of the time, and its predicted peak range has captured the actual crest about half the time — though it tends to over-call Flood when the river actually tops out at High.
An honest self-check it surfaced: during the long recession after a flood, the card's deterministic "flood floor" stays elevated (e.g. 85%) while the river is already falling — so on the logged sample the raw analog has been a bit better-calibrated for flood risk than the floored version. Catching things like that is the whole point of this page; it points at a future tuning. (Small sample — directional only.)
Experimental, like the rest of the Scorecard; the numbers will firm up as more events are logged.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: new prediction_eval/ponca_analog_eval.py reads the producer's append-only ponca_analog_history.jsonl (read-only) and grades each armed call against Ponca 07055660's max discharge over a forward 36 h window (from buffalo_study/data/gauges), writing ponca_analog_settled.jsonl (idempotent, keyed by generated_at). It grades the k-NN class/peak (modal vs. actual class, median_peak_cfs MAE, p25–p75 band hit) and the flood Brier for flood_risk_pct (override-floored) vs. raw_flood_risk_pct (raw k-NN, on the common sample). score_all.py calls settle() inline (no extra cron) and adds a ponca_analog block to scorecard.json; the /scorecard route renders it; the Coverage table flips Ponca from "logged, not graded" → "graded." See ARCHITECTURE §4.13 + §16-14.

Version 2026.6.24.2 — June 24, 2026

Retired the experimental neural-net (LSTM) predictor

The old LSTM forecast is fully retired. It was an experimental neural-net gauge predictor for Richland and Cossatot; its on-page cards were pulled back in April (too many false alarms), and it has now been fully decommissioned behind the scenes. Nothing paddler-facing changes — the physics and empirical forecasts you actually see are unaffected.
On the new Scorecard page, the LSTM no longer appears in the "Coverage" list. It briefly showed there as "not yet graded" right after the page launched; since it is retired, it has been removed.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: the :14 nn_predict.py inference cron was commented out, the dead nn_prediction read/embed was removed from cossatot_assemble.py + richland_assemble.py (the key no longer appears in their output JSON), the stale "LSTM forecast" wording was dropped from the Richland page's social/meta description, and all LSTM-only artifacts (nn_predict.py, nn_predict_debug.py, nn_alert.py, nn_alert_state.json, nn_output.json, both model_epoch100.pt weight files) were moved to /home/dave/creeks/retired_lstm/ (reversible — a README there documents how to resurrect). The HUC12 masks under /home/dave/models/ were kept — they are read by the live Richland physics QPE reader and the map-polygon builder, not just the LSTM. Full record in ARCHITECTURE.md §4.10 + §14 Gotcha #10. Side benefit: one less hourly job on the 2 GB ScriptPi.

Version 2026.6.24.1 — June 24, 2026

New: a Prediction Scorecard page — see how accurate the site's forecasts have actually been

There's a new "Scorecard" page (linked from the home page and the footer of every page) that grades the site's own forecasts against what the rivers actually did. Every prediction the system makes is now recorded and checked later — so you can see how much to trust it, instead of just taking its word.
It covers three kinds of forecast: the crest predictors (Cossatot, Richland, Hailstone — how close the predicted peak was to the real one), the "likelihood of a rise" headlines (how often a forecast rise actually showed up vs. how often the rain fizzled), and the recession countdowns (how close the "time to drop to X" estimates land — these are brand-new, so that section is still filling in over the coming weeks).
It's honest about its own blind spots. Right now the scorecard openly shows that the "likelihood of a rise" engine over-warns — on several rivers a forecast rise doesn't actually materialize most of the time. Showing that plainly is the point; it's the first step toward fixing it. A "Coverage" section at the bottom lists which forecasts are graded and which aren't graded yet.
Experimental. This is a behind-the-scenes accountability tool we're now exposing publicly. The numbers will shift as more predictions settle, and some forecast types aren't graded yet.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: a new ScriptPi subsystem /home/dave/prediction_eval/ (score_all.py, cron 01:30 daily) reads the settled prediction archives for three already-self-recording families — physics (<basin>/predictions/), empirical (<gauge>_empirical_predictions/), and recession (recession_eval/ledger/) — and writes one display-ready scorecard.json, SCP'd to DMZPi. Physics is scored on peak MAE / bias / within-±20%; empirical on hit-rate (rose to ≥ called tier = verified + missed_higher) vs. no-rise rate (no_change), broken out by basin, confidence, and rainfall percentile band (which surfaces the known selection bias — the above_p75 band currently shows a higher no-rise rate than p50_to_p75); recession reuses recession_archive.score(). The DMZPi /scorecard route renders the JSON read-only (no compute on DMZPi; validated via the venv test_client before the gunicorn restart). This is Phase 1 of a system-wide "log every prediction, grade it later" initiative — audit + plan in creekintelligence/research/prediction_audit/. The still-ungraded predictors (Ponca analog, downstream propagation, the Buffalo per-gauge rise engine, the retired LSTM) are listed as not-yet-graded in the page's Coverage table and are Phase 2.

Version 2026.6.23.1 — June 23, 2026

Recession countdowns are now realistic — and honest about how sure we are

The "Time to …" countdowns now reflect how rivers actually recede. They used to take the current (fast) drop and extrapolate it in a straight line, which badly over-shot — on the flashier gauges it could say a creek would hit "Too Low" in 2 days when history says it's more like a week-plus. Every gauge now uses a per-creek recession curve built from years of USGS history: the drop is fast up high and slows way down near baseflow, just like the real river, and the estimate is anchored to how fast the current recession is actually falling. For example, Pruitt's "Time to Too Low" went from ~2 days to ~7 days — much closer to reality. This is on every recession card now (Cossatot, Richland, Hailstone, the Buffalo mainstem gauges, and Mulberry / Big Piney's float sections). Still an estimate — it assumes no new rain.
St. Joe and Harriet no longer show a "Time to Too Low." Those two lower Buffalo gauges almost never actually drop to the Too-Low mark — they recede into the low hundreds of cfs and just sit there (historically they reach Too Low only ~2% of the time), so that countdown was simply wrong. It's now hidden for them; they still show "Time to Low but Floatable." The upper gauges, which genuinely do bleed all the way down, are unchanged.
The "Confidence" label now means what you'd expect. It used to reflect how much recent data we had — so it could say "high" on a fuzzy, days-out guess. Now it reflects the actual uncertainty of the number: a tight, near-term call reads high; a wide, multi-day one reads low. (A 7-day recession forecast is a coin-flip on whether it even stays dry, so it'll honestly say low.)
The countdowns read consistently everywhere. The Buffalo mainstem gauge cards and the Mulberry / Big Piney float-section cards now use the same "Time to Optimal → Time to Low but Floatable → Time to Too Low" wording and order as the standalone creek pages.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: the timing model is a per-gauge master recession curve — a flow-dependent decay rate k(Q) learned from USGS history, integrated to a transit time and event-anchored to the current observed rate (clamped 0.5–2×) — in /home/dave/recession_eval/recession_curve.py + recession_curves.json (9 gauge curves), imported by every *_assemble.py compute_recession() with the old single-exponential kept as a fallback. The St. Joe/Harriet suppression uses a config recession_baseline (empirical floor, ~p10) as the decay asymptote so any threshold below it returns no countdown. Confidence is now derived from each prediction's relative spread + horizon (recession_curve.confidence_level). A prediction-evaluation framework (recession_archive.py, on cron) now records every recession countdown to a ledger and settles it against actuals to score accuracy over time. Threshold keys were standardized to too_low/low_floatable/optimal across all configs/assemblers. Full design, history pulls, and analysis live in creekintelligence/research/recession_eval/.

Version 2026.6.22.2 — June 22, 2026

Clearer recession countdowns + gauges stop briefly greying out

The "Recession Countdown" cards now read in plain falling order — Time to Optimal → Time to Low but Floatable → Time to Too Low. On the Cossatot, Richland, and Hailstone (Upper Buffalo) pages, each countdown is labeled "Time to …" and laid out left-to-right in the order the creek actually drops through the levels, color-coded to match the level legend (green Optimal, yellow Low but Floatable, red Too Low). When a creek is running above the recommended range and falling, the card now leads with Time to Optimal — when the high water is expected to settle back into the good range — then the lower levels after. (Previously the above-recommended case showed only the two lower levels, and on the Hailstone card the order and colors were off.)
Hailstone's recession card sizing is fixed — the countdown numbers had been rendering in an odd, unstyled font; they now match the big, readable style the other creeks use.
The "Confidence" line under each countdown is clearer — centered and bold, and it now reads "Confidence in countdown timing" so it's obvious the High/Medium/Low refers to how trustworthy the time estimates are (how cleanly the creek is falling), not the level itself.
Gauges no longer briefly turn grey when a single USGS reading drops out. Every so often the USGS feed returns nothing for one gauge for a cycle, which used to blank that gauge (grey, "Unknown") for ~15 minutes until the next update — and it rotated across gauges (Boxley, Ponca, Pruitt…). The system now retries, and if a reading is still missing it holds the last good value (still timestamped, so you can see its age) rather than going blank — unless the gauge has truly been silent for over 90 minutes, in which case it still shows as stale.

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: the three height/CFS recession cards were consolidated into one shared render_recession_card() helper in dashboard.py (they had drifted into near-duplicate blocks edited in parallel). Hailstone's recession model now also emits hours_to_high (time to fall to the 2000-cfs Above-Recommended boundary) in hailstone_output.json. The gauge-fetch resilience lives in creeks/fetch_gauges.py: fetch_stream_readings() retries transient empty USGS responses, and main() carries forward the previous good reading (new carried_forward flag, 90-minute cap) so one failed pull no longer greys a gauge.

Version 2026.6.22.1 — June 22, 2026

Ponca rainfall card now leads with the trusted signals + new downstream propagation card

The "Ponca Gauge — AI Rainfall Event Analysis" card now leads with the deterministic signals, not the historical analog. During a developing event it reads, in order of reliability: the watershed rainfall alerts (the hand-calibrated tripwires on the specific drainages above Ponca — Upper Buffalo, Beech Creek, Adkins, Boen Gulf), the upstream Boxley gauge, and the observed rainfall + antecedent wetness. The historical-analog comparison is now a clearly-labeled secondary note — it leads only on ordinary, low-level rain days (its accurate range) and can no longer talk the card down to "won't develop / Fizzle" while those upstream signals are firing. The card also now says the river is in flood when it's already there (instead of "headed to flood"), and pivots to the live concern — the continuing climb and downstream propagation. It refreshes every 15 minutes (was hourly). Prompted by the June 22 event, where the old analog-led card read "won't develop into a meaningful rise," then "could go either way," while the river was on its way to a major flood.
New "Ponca Gauge — AI River Rise & Propagation Analysis" card (/buffalo/) — appears above the mainstem gauges only while the river is rising. It narrates how a rise at Ponca rolls downstream: roughly when the surge will crest at Pruitt (~5 h behind Ponca, about Ponca's level) and at St. Joe / Grinder Ferry (~14 h behind, typically several times higher), and how high each is expected to get — as a range, compared to that spot's own flood stage. Travel time shifts with how wet the ground is (dry ground = slower). Built for NPS rangers and campers weighing the gravel bars downstream — it answers "how high will Grinders get, and how long before it spikes." Experimental — timing is approximate and magnitude is a range; verify against the gauges. Runs on the same local AI model (no external calls, no cost).

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: the rainfall card now reads the live creek-alert state (read-only) and the Buffalo physics propagation/flood signals already in buffalo_output.json; the propagation card's lag/amplification constants come from the 12-year USGS archive cross-checked against the Buffalo Study's calibrated 2026 event log, and are antecedent-conditional. Both narratives are produced by the local qwen3.6:27b model — the propagation one is a separate focused prompt embedded in ponca_outlook.json.

Version 2026.5.24.1 — May 24, 2026

Ponca Gauge historical event reporting + experimental AI rainfall event analysis

New Ponca Gauge Historical Event Reporting page (/ponca/historical/) — a deep history of how the Buffalo at Ponca has behaved, using the National Park Service flow buckets for the Ponca→Pruitt commercial-float section (Very Low <100, Low 100–200, Moderate 200–900, High 900–1600, Flood ≥1600 cfs; outfitters may launch 100–1600). It shows days per year in each stage and a storm-by-storm catalog back through the radar-rainfall record (Feb 2015→present, with earlier flow-only events on an extended page). Each storm lists the rainfall that drove it (basin-average over the four HUC12s above Ponca, plus a per-HUC breakdown and the wettest single sub-watershed), the starting flow, and every ≥4-hour stage the river held on the way up and down. Linked from the Buffalo page below the 3-day forecast.
New "Ponca Gauge — AI Rainfall Event Analysis" card on the Buffalo page (/buffalo/) — appears above the mainstem gauges only when rain is actively falling over the Ponca headwaters (≥0.25″ accumulated). It compares the unfolding storm to ~166 similar past storms and writes a short, plain-English outlook — the most likely peak stage, and whether there's meaningful risk of blowing past the 1,600 cfs launch ceiling — in qualitative terms ("watching… / likely Moderate / high confidence of Flood"). It updates each hour as the storm builds, switches to an "already crested, now receding" read once past the peak, and disappears after about a day of dry weather. Runs on a local AI model (no external API calls, no cost). Experimental — it's a directional read of upstream rainfall vs. history, not a forecast; always verify against the gauge.
Navigation buttons added to all historical report pages — the Cossatot, Richland, Hailstone, and Ponca historical pages now carry the standard navigation footer (previously they had no way back to the rest of the site).
Fixed the American Whitewater link on the historical pages (the Ponca-section link had pointed to the wrong run).

Not user-facing, recorded for completeness: built a local archive of MRMS radar rainfall for all 37 Buffalo HUC12 sub-watersheds (2014→present, two source archives) plus full USGS history for all 7 Buffalo gauges, which back the historical report and the analog evaluator. The evaluator (buffalo_dashboard/ponca_analog.py, hourly cron :20, flock) runs a numpy k-NN match against a shipped analog library and calls the local model only when its call changes (~10 inferences per event), writing ponca_outlook.json for the dashboard to render.

Version 2026.5.21.1 — May 21, 2026

PayPal-based donation support

New /support/ page — explains what donations fund and embeds a PayPal donate button (merchant KZM3SRM3W34US). Dark-themed to match the rest of the site. Includes a fallback text link for cases where the PayPal button image fails to load, and a required disclosure that donations are personal gifts (not tax-deductible — Arkansas Creek Intelligence by Druidnetworks is not a 501(c)(3)).
New /support/thanks/ page — optional return destination after a completed donation. Short thank-you, link back to the gauges.
Unobtrusive "♥ Support this project" footer link added to /, /gauges/, /watersheds, /cossatot/, /richland/, /hailstone/, /mulberry/, and /buffalo/. Deliberately styled in muted gray near the existing disclaimer — available without nagging. Not added to /admin/, /suggest, /study/*, /changelog, or /guide/.
No new dependencies, no environment variables, no database changes — the donate form posts directly to paypal.com; PayPal handles payment, receipt email, and merchant deposit. Removing the routes removes the donation surface entirely.

Version 2026.5.20.1 — May 20, 2026

Hailstone reaches feature parity + nightly AI analysis moves to local inference

Hailstone Intelligence is now a full peer of Cossatot and Richland — the Upper Buffalo run page gained a physics predictor, recession countdown, nightly AI analysis, and per-prediction + per-event archives. Previously the page was composer-only (gauge state + empirical forecast from the buffalo dashboard); it now models rainfall → CFS response for the Boxley drainage (156 cells, ~156 km²) on its own hourly cycle. The same gauge (USGS 07055646) drives both the Boxley card on the main /gauges/ table and the Hailstone-specific tier mapping (500/700/2000 CFS).
Hailstone gauge tile now shows feet below CFS — the creek system now fetches both flow and gauge height for 07055646 (previously CFS-only). The Hailstone card mirrors Cossatot/Richland's primary-value/secondary-value layout: CFS as the headline value, current stage in feet on a small subdued line below the tier label.
Nightly AI Analysis Archives moved to local inference — Cossatot's and Richland's nightly calibration analyzers used to call Claude Sonnet via the public API. Both now run against a locally-hosted qwen3.6:27b model on the inference host, using server-default parameters. Hailstone's new analyzer uses the same local model. No external API calls are required for any of the three nightly reviews.
Nightly analyzer scope expanded to include the empirical forecast — all three nightly reviews now grade two distinct models per day: the physics predictor (which they may also adjust calibration on) and the empirical forecast headline (which they comment on but don't tune — the empirical engine's percentile tables are regenerated separately). Each daily markdown now has an "Empirical Forecast" section showing the headline that was issued, the settled outcome, and the AI's assessment of whether the headline panned out.
Physics predictor baseline fix — the RISING branch in both cossatot_predict.py and richland_predict.py was double-counting in-transit water during active rainfall, producing fake peaks of up to +2.0 ft on Cossatot dawn predictions and a similar pattern on Richland. The baseline now holds at the current gauge value until band contributions finish arriving, then transitions to the recession decay. Validation on the worst archived errors: Cossatot 2026-05-20 06:09 prediction went from 5.28 ft → 3.33 ft against an actual peak of 3.29 ft. A retrospective supplement at /cossatot/analysis/2026-05-20-Opus-Supplement documents the diagnosis and the per-prediction replay improvements.
Recession countdown now suppresses during active rainfall — when measurable rain is falling near the gauge (>0.05"/hr), the recession card displays "Suppressed — active rainfall in the basin invalidates decay extrapolation" instead of the countdown values. The underlying recession_k / recession_h_base parameters are still computed in case the physics predictor needs them, but the dashboard hides time-to-tier estimates that the exponential-decay assumption can't honor mid-event.
Standardized card layout across the three intelligence pages — Cossatot, Richland, and Hailstone now follow the same eight-card structure: Gauge → Recession (conditional) → Rainfall → Map → Physics Predictor → Physics Predictor Archives → Empirical Forecast → Empirical Forecast Archives → Nightly AI Analysis Archive. All archive page titles match their card-link names exactly.
Color-coded tier breakpoints on the gauge card — the right side of each gauge card now lists all four tiers in their semantic colors (Too Low red, Low but Floatable yellow, Optimal green, Above Recommended blue) with the exact thresholds for each. Replaces the old "Tier breakpoints: <3.0 ft Too Low · 3.0–3.4 …" inline strip that ran together at the bottom of the card.
"Too Low" gauge tile flipped from gray to red — the colored tile inside the gauge card now uses the same red as the recession card and the tier list when a creek is below its low threshold, matching the Buffalo dashboard's existing scheme. The gray was a holdover from earlier when "Too Low" was treated as a passive state.
Predictor status text standardized on rainfall language — both non-active states use the same wording on all three pages: "No upstream rainfall to drive a prediction" when QPE is quiet across the watershed, "Upstream rainfall too light to drive a rise" when bands have rainfall but the contributions sum below the rise threshold.
Subtitle text format unified — all three intelligence pages now use USGS {gauge id} · {river} near {town}, AR, matching the USGS station's official name. Previously Richland listed zones in the subtitle and Hailstone listed the run name.
Hailstone gauge precip line added — the per-page Gauge precip total (sourced from the USGS 00045 collocated rain gauge on 07055646) now appears in the Hailstone gauge card next to the trend/time lines, matching Cossatot and Richland.
"Phase 2" header label removed from Cossatot — the Cossatot meta line used to read "Data age: N min · Phase 2"; now reads just "Data age: N min" like the others. The Phase 2 work shipped weeks ago.

Underlying schema, infrastructure, and unit-bug cleanups (not user-facing but recorded for completeness): new hailstone_predict.py + hailstone_calibration.json + hailstone_predictions_archive.py, three new cron entries (:17 Hailstone QPE consumer, :21 Hailstone physics predictor, 23:55 Hailstone nightly analyzer), fixed a 25.4× unit error in the new Hailstone QPE consumer (had been treating already-in-inches shared QPE values as mm and dividing again — antecedent moisture was reading DRY when the basin was actually NORMAL/WET), exposed recession_k/recession_h_base on Richland's gauge output (latent gap that left the physics predictor falling back to a flat baseline instead of an exponential decay), and added a per-supplement file-naming convention (YYYY-MM-DD-suffix.md) for retrospective analyses written outside the nightly cadence.

Version 2026.5.15.1 — May 15, 2026

Stale-Data Warning Banners Across All Mobile Dashboards

Home page (/) freshness pill — new always-on indicator at the top of the page with three states: green "Live — updated N min ago" when data is fresh, yellow "Data may be stale — last update was N minutes ago" when past the 30-min threshold, and red "Data feed unavailable — ScriptPi push may be down" when predictor_output.json can't be loaded at all (previously the page silently rendered as "All Quiet" during push failures, hiding the outage)
New stale banners on five sub-dashboards — /cossatot/, /richland/, /hailstone/, /mulberry/, and /buffalo/ now render the same yellow top-of-page warning banner that /gauges/ and /watersheds have had. Fires only when each page's underlying JSON is past its 30-min _stale threshold, so the banner only appears when something is actually wrong
New shared helpers — render_stale_banner(data, expected_interval_min=15) and render_freshness_pill(data, expected_interval_min=15) live alongside the other freshness utilities (_format_age, _age_color). The banner markup was previously duplicated inline on /gauges/ and /watersheds; those two pages now call the helper (no visual change)
Motivation — a recent ScriptPi push failure went unnoticed because the home page and sub-dashboards had no top-of-page indicator that data was stale. Only the two pages that had banners (gauges/watersheds) made the failure visible

Version 2026.4.21.1 — April 21, 2026

Creek Page Title & Buffalo Card Standardization

White page titles across creek dashboards — Cossatot, Richland, and Buffalo h1s now render in white (#ffffff) to match the landing page style (previously cyan #4fc3f7)
Cossatot title shortened — "Cossatot River — Watershed Intelligence" → "Cossatot River Intelligence"
Buffalo title renamed — "Buffalo River Dashboard" → "Buffalo River Intelligence"
Buffalo gauge cards now color-coded by level — full-card backgrounds match the landing-page scheme: blue (Above Recommended), green (Optimal), yellow (Low but Floatable), red (Too Low), neutral gray (Unknown). Replaces the small inline level badge with a full-width spelled-out level line.
Sub-section contrast tweak — trend arrow and gauge-sub blocks (Rise Prediction, Recession, Flood Risk) on Buffalo cards now sit on a semi-transparent dark background so their semantic colors remain legible against the colored card.

Version 2026.4.15.1 — April 15, 2026

Buffalo River Dashboard

New /buffalo/ dashboard — Buffalo River Dashboard page with 5 mainstem gauge cards (Boxley, Ponca, Pruitt, St. Joe, Harriet), 2 tributary signal separator cards (Richland Creek, Bear Creek), interactive Leaflet.js HUC12 rainfall map, zone rainfall table, flood/propagation alert banners, rise prediction and recession countdown sections per gauge
New buffalo_output.json data source — pushed by ScriptPi every 15 min, contains 7 gauge readings, 37 HUC12 QPE values, 8-zone rainfall aggregates, per-gauge rise predictions, recession countdowns, propagation alerts, and flood risk levels
Leaflet.js HUC12 choropleth map — 37 sub-watershed polygons colored by rainfall intensity, 3 toggle modes (QPE 1hr, QPE 24hr, QPF 24hr), 7 gauge circle markers colored by level, CartoDB dark tiles, tooltips with zone name and rainfall values, graceful fallback if GeoJSON not deployed
GeoJSON static file — simplified buffalo_huc12_simple.geojson (136KB, 37 features) served from new /static/ directory
Contextual recession messages — gauge cards always show recession status: "Already below thresholds" (Too Low), "Rising" (rising trend), "Holding steady" (stable, not receding), "Beyond forecast window" (receding but thresholds far off), or countdown timers with confidence
buffalo_only gauge filtering — 4 new creeks.yaml entries (Pruitt, St. Joe, Harriet, Bear Creek with buffalo_only: true) filtered from /gauges/ table and landing page cards/counts
Buffalo QPF drainages hidden from /watersheds/ — "Buffalo QPF" family drainages (pruitt_zone, stjoe_zone, bear_creek_zone, harriet_zone) filtered from the watersheds page
QPE/QPF explainer — subtitle below rainfall map: "QPE = Precipitation Estimate (observed) · QPF = Precipitation Forecast"
Home button in nav footer — gray "Home" button added to the shared nav_button_footer() bottom row alongside Guide, Changelog, and Suggestions
Buffalo River link — added to landing page tool grid and nav_button_footer() blue button grid
Centered text across mobile pages — all non-card text (titles, subtitles, data age, section labels, rainfall metadata) centered on Cossatot, Richland, and Buffalo dashboard pages
Watersheds "Back to Home" repositioned — moved above the page title
Dashboard grew from ~2,975 to ~3,565 lines

Version 2026.4.7.1 — April 7, 2026

Richland Creek Dashboard & Neural Net Predictors

New /richland/ dashboard — Richland Creek Watershed Intelligence page (USGS 07055875) with gauge status card, recession countdown, two-zone watershed rainfall table (Upper Richland + Falling Water + Combined), physics predictor card, and LSTM neural net forecast card (8 horizons)
New /richland/analysis/ placeholder routes — "Nightly analysis coming soon" index page; date routes return 404
New richland_output.json data source — pushed by ScriptPi every 15 min, contains gauge data, two-zone rainfall, physics prediction, and neural net prediction
Neural net predictor card on /cossatot/ — 12-horizon LSTM forecast with peak CFS, forecast timeline table, threshold crossings, and data quality indicators
Shared render_nn_card() helper — renders identical card layout for both rivers; shows peak forecast, per-hour timeline with peak row highlighted, CFS-to-level threshold crossings, and QPE/ASOS data quality footer; handles null (initializing), error, stale (>90 min), and active states
Physics card renamed on /cossatot/ — "Rise Prediction" / "Prediction" headers changed to "Physics Predictor" with gear emoji across all card states (active, quiet, no data)
Landing page updated — added "Richland Intelligence" to the tool navigation grid; renamed "Cossatot Predictor" to "Cossatot Intelligence"
Nav footer updated — added Richland Intelligence link to the shared nav_button_footer() used across all pages; renamed Cossatot link to match
Shared constants refactored — COSSATOT_LEVEL_COLORS renamed to LEVEL_COLORS, COSSATOT_TREND_SYMBOLS renamed to TREND_SYMBOLS (used by both river dashboards)
New constants — NN_THRESHOLDS (CFS-to-level mappings per basin: Richland 500/1000/1500, Cossatot 150/730/1800), NN_LEVEL_COLORS (gray/green/blue for Too Low/Optimal/High), is_nn_stale() helper
New architecture document — DMZPI_ARCH_4_7_26.md supersedes DMZPI_ARCH_3_11_26.md
Dashboard grew from ~2,460 to ~2,975 lines

Version 2026.3.10.1 — March 10, 2026

Landing Page & Route Restructure - New landing page at / — mobile-first dark theme with site title, orientation blurb, live status summary, and dynamic creek condition cards - Creek cards show all Optimal gauges (green) or, if none, all Low but Floatable gauges (yellow); "All Quiet" message when no creeks are runnable - Status summary line shows gauge and watershed condition counts with color-coded text - Tool navigation grid — four main buttons (Gauges, Watersheds, Cossatot Predictor, Buffalo Study) plus secondary links (Guide, Changelog, Suggest a Creek) - Gauge table moved from / to /gauges/ — all table logic unchanged - Temporary legacy link on landing page points to /gauges/ for returning users - New /guide/ placeholder page — "Coming Soon" with back link to home - Back link audit — watersheds, changelog, study, and suggest pages link back to /gauges/; error pages and Cossatot nav link to / (landing) - Last updated timestamp on landing page converted from UTC to Central time

Version 2026.3.9.1 — March 9, 2026

Four-Color Unification - Unified color language across creek levels, prediction status, and recent rain: Red (nothing) / Yellow (maybe) / Green (go) / Blue (lots) - Prediction status expanded to four tiers: No Alert (red), Watch (yellow), Warning (green), Flood (blue) - Recent Rain column now shows 7-day precipitation total in inches with color-coded background, replacing category labels (MOIST/SEMI-DRY/DROUGHT) - Recent Rain multipliers updated: <0.25" = 1.4x trigger, <0.75" = 1.2x, <1.50" = 1.0x, ≥1.50" = 0.9x - FLOOD status triggers at 200% of effective trigger threshold — indicates exceptional rainfall - Micro-creek lag display: Drainages with 0-1 hour lag now show "NOW" instead of numeric range - Signal alerts updated with lag-aware messaging (micro-creeks show "NOW", mainstem rivers show hours)

Version 2026.3.6.1 — March 6, 2026

Drainage Trigger & Timing Calibration - Adkins: 2.0" / 4hr → 2.5" / 6hr - Boen Gulf: 2.0" / 4hr → 2.5" / 6hr - Upper Buffalo: window 6hr → 12hr, lag 4-6hr → 6-8hr - Beech Creek: 1.5" → 2.0" - Upper Kings: 1.5" → 2.0" - Osage: 1.5" / 4hr → 2.5" / 6hr - Richland Main: window 6hr → 12hr - Falling Water: 1.5" / 6hr → 1.75" / 12hr - Upper Cossatot: window 6hr → 12hr - Upper Big Piney: window 6hr → 24hr, lag 10-12hr → 12-16hr - EFLB: 1.5" → 2.0" - Pine Creek OK: window 6hr → 12hr

Version 2026.3.5.3 — March 5, 2026

Cosmetic Updates - Renamed "DRY" status to "QUIET" on the Watersheds page and in alert bar logic (same red styling, new CSS class .st-quiet). - Renamed "Conditions" column to "Recent Rain" and changed from styled badge spans to full-cell background coloring (matching the Status column style). - Updated status_colors/status_text_colors dicts to use "QUIET" key.

Version 2026.3.5.2 — March 5, 2026

Sticky Status Hold - WATCH and WARNING statuses now hold for the duration of a drainage's lag time plus a 2-hour buffer before clearing, preventing premature status downgrade before water reaches the gauge.

Antecedent Dryness System - New "Conditions" column on Watersheds page showing MOIST, SEMI-DRY, or DROUGHT based on recent rainfall history. - Trigger thresholds automatically increase during dry conditions: +15% for SEMI-DRY, +30% for DROUGHT. - Dryness is computed from rolling 7-day and 30-day precipitation totals per drainage. - Trigger column on Watersheds page now shows the effective (adjusted) trigger value.

Cossatot Drainage Update - Upper Cossatot trigger raised from 1.00" to 1.25" in 6 hours. - Upper Cossatot lag time updated from 3-6 hours to 8-10 hours based on observed March 5 event.

YAML Sync - Creek and drainage definitions now automatically sync from ScriptPi to DMZPi every 15 minutes, ensuring single source of truth.

Changelog - Added this changelog page, accessible from the footer of both dashboard pages.

Version 2026.3.5.1 — March 5, 2026

Baseline version. All prior changes consolidated.

WATCH / WARNING Terminology - Renamed "TRIGGER" status to "WARNING" to align with NWS conventions. - WATCH threshold raised from 50% to 75% of trigger value to reduce false positives.

Color Scheme Standardization - Watersheds page: RED = DRY (no go), YELLOW = WATCH (maybe), GREEN = WARNING (go time). - Main creek page: Watershed radar column and alert bar colors match the same scheme. - Alert bar is now green for WARNING, yellow for WATCH-only.

Drainage Trigger Updates - Bobtail Creek: 1.5" → 2.0" in 6hr - Long Devils Fork: 1.5" / 4hr → 2.5" / 6hr - Big Devils Fork: 1.5" / 4hr → 2.5" / 6hr - West Fork Shop Creek: 2.0" / 4hr → 2.5" / 6hr - Thomas Creek: 2.0" / 4hr → 2.5" / 6hr