Wes Brown forwarded information on this death on Alabama’s South Sauty Creek on June 20th. Victim was Donald Craig Stinnett, 49. He’s called a “swimmer” in news reports, which is how tubing accidents are classified by the government. A quote from Jackson County Sheriff's office mentions he "fell off of his tube and didn't come back up", The obituary mentions a rafting accident.
Despite the incident being in summer, we had several heavy rains and high flows in June, turns out 6/20 (day of incident) was one such day. Looks like levels spiked early morning 6/20 and were trending down all day, however if incident happened around noon to 4 pm, levels would have been on the high side of medium still.
~500cfs is about 10ft on the USGS gauge and correlates to about 20" on the paddlers stick gauge in Bucks Pocket (takeout for the Class IV section). 24" is when most people start considering the run "high-ish", 16" is prime medium flows and significantly higher than a typical level you might expect in late June.
