Grafton Notch's 23 foot corkscrew through glacially polished granite potholes, steps from Route 26 and at its loudest in the melt.
Mid April through June
Big water window
in a typical year
Snowmelt
What drives it
Bear River
Climatology
Data on this page
Bear River is ungauged
Maine BPL
Managed by
their rules govern
Trail status, closures and safety rules belong to each falls' managing agency, named and linked on every page.
The season
What fills Screw Auger Falls, and when
The Bear River drains Grafton Notch's high country, so the melt from mid April through June sends the falls boiling through its carved potholes; summer shows the sculpture, spring shows the sculptor. The park's own line about the lip of the falls, quoted below, is the safety sentence that matters.
Typical best flow: Mid April through June
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What the agency itself says
A walking path from Route 26 leads to this 23-foot waterfall lying in a narrow gorge along the Bear River.
Grafton Notch State Park (Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands)What a snowmelt year looks like at full send: Palouse Falls in mid April, when the Palouse River is still carrying the melt. The same falls in late August is a ribbon. Timing is most of the visit. “04-15-14-palouse” — Dsdugan — CC0
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Right now
Current flow at Screw Auger Falls
The other half of the story: the same Palouse Falls in late August. Nothing is wrong; this is what a snowmelt river does every year once the melt is spent. “Palouse Falls 20100829” by Mark Wagner, CC BY-SA 2.5
Getting there
Access, in the agency's words and ours
A walking path from Route 26 leads to the falls, per Maine's park page, with the park open 9 am to sunset from May 15 to October 15 for a fee; cell coverage in the notch is spotty to nonexistent, as the page warns.
Melt through carved granite (Vernal Fall's polished rock, NPS photo). Screw Auger's potholes were bored the same way, and refill every spring. “Rainbow in the mist of Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. NPS-Madelyn Carpenter (18497149938)” — NPS Natural Resources — Public domain
Common questions
Screw Auger Falls flow season FAQ
The reliable big-water window is Mid April through June. The Bear River drains Grafton Notch's high country, so the melt from mid April through June sends the falls boiling through its carved potholes; summer shows the sculpture, spring shows the sculptor. The park's own line about the lip of the falls, quoted below, is the safety sentence that matters.
Bear River has no USGS gauge near the falls, so the seasonal pattern above is the flow guide for Screw Auger Falls, and Grafton Notch State Park (Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands) is the source for current conditions on the ground.
By August the river relaxes and the potholes become wading-adjacent scenery; the corkscrew fury is a spring event.
Grafton Notch State Park (Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands). A walking path from Route 26 leads to the falls, per Maine's park page, with the park open 9 am to sunset from May 15 to October 15 for a fee; cell coverage in the notch is spotty to nonexistent, as the page warns. Trail status, closures and safety rules are theirs, and their page is linked on this one; nothing here overrides what they publish.
In their own words: "supervise children closely and avoid the lip of the falls" That sentence is Grafton Notch State Park (Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands)'s, quoted verbatim, and their page is the place to check before you go.
Yosemite Falls in May, running on snowmelt that will be gone by late summer. The National Park Service tells visitors the falls can be dry by August, which is why every falls page here starts from its watershed. “Tourists below Yosemite Falls (39832011431)” by Mike McBey, CC BY 2.0
One of New England's tallest single drops, on Moxie Stream near The Forks, managed as state land with a boardwalked trail and famously little bureaucracy.
Flow windows are typical-year climatology drawn from the driver and the agency language quoted above, not forecasts. Live readings and per-date percentiles are U.S. Geological Survey data, public domain; the above-or-below-typical line is our comparison and is labelled as such. Access, trail and safety information belongs to Grafton Notch State Park (Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands). National picture: waterfall season across the US → Hero image: “Rainbow in the mist of Vernal Falls in Yosemite National Park. NPS-Madelyn Carpenter (18497149938)” — NPS Natural Resources — Public domain
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