Talk:Flathead River

Forks

How is the North Fork the longest? It just has the largest drainage area. The North Fork is 53 miles long, the Middle Fork 87 miles long, and the South Fork, 98 miles in length. If I'm wrong, inform me, please. Shannon^{talk SIGN!} 23:14, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah, I think you have the wrong length for the North Fork, but are right in saying it isn't the longest anyway. I probably wrote that it was the longest, perhaps using the now dead link to the The Columbia Gazetteer of North America (which used to be online but does not seem to be anymore--and was not the greatest source anyway). I can't remember. It's possible I overinterpretted things in order to say the North Fork is sometimes considered the mainstem--I think I wanted to cite the river's length as a full 240 miles instead of the 150 or so miles of the main stem (158 miles according to this page). It may be I guessed about it being the longest. But I think your 53 mile length is for the US portion only, where you'd get that figure? A quick search right now shows some sources citing US length only as if it was the total, and others using unclear wording. This page, for example, says the North Fork "flows south across the border 57 miles to its confluence with the Middle Fork"--but is that 57 miles the total length or not? This book (I think that links to the first page about the North Fork) says the Canadian border is at river mile 58 and has a nice map of the US portion with river mile markings (the following pages give the length of the forks as: South Fork, 100 miles; Middle Fork, 92 miles). Meanwhile the nwcouncil's subbasin plan about the Flathead River (PDFs here) says on page 13 that the Canadian portion of the North Fork is 31 miles long, which would make the total for the North Fork 89 miles. Annoyingly the subbasin plan seems to never give the total length of the North Fork. And their subbasin plans are not 100% error-free (they have a wildly wrong number for the discharge of the Kettle River). Anyway, I probably did not do a great job on fact checking, so feel free to change things. It shouldn't be too hard to find a better source for the length of the Canadian portion, or the total length in both countries, but my quick searches didn't turn up anything other than the nwcouncil.org factoid. Since you've made a North Fork page perhaps it would make sense to take out the claim that the North Fork is sometimes considered the main stem and adjust the numbers accordingly, unless there is some real truth to the idea. Pfly (talk) 01:37, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

Oh, PS, I remember now where I got the idea about the North Fork sometimes being considered the mainstem--the USGS GNIS entry for the North Fork gives "Flathead River" as a variant name. That's not the best source for such a claim--the variant name might be old and barely ever used. Pfly (talk) 01:42, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

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