
In numbers.
61m
Height
0.48m³/s
Average flow
estimate
May
Best months
286kW
Water power
estimate
The water at Sydney Falls, month by month
It roars from November to April.
The fullest months: from November to April, with the snowmelt. The thinnest: from July to September.
- 0.8 m³/sJan
- 0.7 m³/sFeb
- 0.8 m³/sMar
- 0.7 m³/sApr
- 0.6 m³/sMay
- 0.4 m³/sJun
- 0.2 m³/sJul
- 0.1 m³/sAug
- 0.2 m³/sSep
- 0.4 m³/sOct
- 0.7 m³/sNov
- 0.8 m³/sDec
From about 0.12 m³/s in the lowest month to 0.84 m³/s in the highest. Best months to go, with plenty of water and pleasant days: May.
Estimate: the timing comes from rain, snowmelt and evaporation (NASA POWER, 1991–2020); the amounts from the river model of HydroATLAS (WaterGAP, 1971–2000). Dams upstream can change the real flow.
Waterfall
Sydney Falls is a waterfall in United States. The water falls 61 m over a front 23 m wide. It lies within Mount Rainier Wilderness.
Getting there.
- Parking 1,960 m awaynearest car park in OpenStreetMap, straight line
- Yakima Air Terminal McAllister Field (YKM)nearest airport with scheduled flights · 83 km in a straight lineCar hire at SEA airport (Seattle)Discover Cars · Affiliate link↗
- Maybest months to go (estimate)
Plan your visit
Stay, explore and get there
Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.
How big is it?
How big it really is.
Height of the drop from Wikidata. Buildings and the person are drawn at the same scale.
286 kW
About 0.48 m³/s falling 61 m: the power of the water as it drops.
- enough to power about 72 homes, if it were all turned into electricity
Power of falling water = density × gravity × flow × height. Average flow and height as shown above; an estimate.
Seen from the sky.
8 × 8 km of cloud-free satellite image, with what OpenStreetMap knows around the falls.
N
2 km
Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 (EOX, CC BY 4.0), 8 × 8 km, north up. Points © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The line follows the river as mapped in OpenStreetMap; heights from the 30 m Copernicus model, which smooths narrow drops — the published height of the falls is the one above.
Around the falls the river drops 383 m in 3.6 km. Here the river runs about 379 m below the lower rim of its valley.
What is around.
- —viewpoints
- 1waymarked walking routesDeer Creek Falls to Owyhigh Lakes
- 1car parks
- —swimming spots
- —picnic sites
- 1toilets
- —information boards and visitor centres
- —bus stops within 1 km
- 3other named waterfalls within 4 kmChinook Cascades, Deer Creek Falls, Stafford Falls
- —caves
- 4campsitesDeer Creek Camp, Dewey Lake Camp, Tamanos Creek Camp and 1 more
- —hotels, B&Bs and huts within 6 km
- —restaurants and cafés within 3 km
Counted in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit, up to 2 km around the falls (unless noted). A low number may just mean nobody has mapped it yet. © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL).
Weather
The weather, month by month.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afternoon °C | 0 | 1 | 4 | 8 | 14 | 17 | 21 | 22 | 18 | 10 | 4 | 0 |
| Night °C | -6 | -6 | -4 | -1 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 9 | 6 | 1 | -3 | -6 |
| Rain & snow (mm) | 173 | 112 | 129 | 87 | 74 | 52 | 16 | 24 | 48 | 115 | 168 | 172 |
| Wet days | 20 | 17 | 20 | 19 | 16 | 13 | 6 | 5 | 9 | 16 | 20 | 21 |
| Sun h/day | 2.4 | 4.3 | 4.9 | 6.8 | 8.1 | 9.3 | 11.8 | 10.3 | 7.9 | 5.1 | 2.7 | 1.9 |
| Snow on the ground (cm) | 35 | 36 | 30 | 15 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 14 | 24 |
Long-term averages 1991–2020 (NASA POWER) for a cell about 55 km wide, with temperatures carried to the height of the falls (1,093 m) at −6.5 °C per 1,000 m. Not a forecast.
Recent years
Wet years and dry years
Rain of each month as a share of the 1991–2020 average. A wet season above 100 % usually means a fuller waterfall.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 157% | 149% | 63% | 53% | 147% | 146% | 74% | 36% | 145% | 102% | 111% | 74% |
| 2021 | 92% | 160% | 43% | 27% | 58% | 87% | 40% | 45% | 120% | 93% | 135% | 95% |
| 2022 | 104% | 91% | 58% | 132% | 150% | 176% | 96% | 45% | 14% | 50% | 105% | 91% |
| 2023 | 43% | 78% | 63% | 106% | 54% | 81% | 49% | 129% | 111% | 45% | 73% | 107% |
| 2024 | 112% | 84% | 60% | 68% | 80% | 127% | 59% | 137% | 48% | 69% | 94% | 113% |
| 2025 | 35% | 107% | 99% | 54% | 57% | 28% | 266% | 157% | 73% | 110% | 90% | 187% |
130% wetter than usual 70% drier than usual
Compare with the waterfalls nearby.
About these numbers
| Names, height, width, river | Wikidata (Q37284) · CC0 |
|---|---|
| River flow and catchment | HydroATLAS / RiverATLAS v1.0 (Linke et al. 2019) · CC BY 4.0 |
| Climate | NASA POWER, 1991–2020 |
| Relief, river profile, 3D model | Copernicus DEM GLO-30 · © DLR e.V., © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, Copernicus/ESA |
| Paths, viewpoints, parking | © OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL |
| Images | EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons |
Every figure is an average, an estimate or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.
The family
Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers or canyons?
Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, month by month, in seven languages.



