Real-time water data are published quickly so people can see recent observations. Speed comes before the complete review used for an approved record. A value marked provisional can be changed after instrument checks, field measurements, rating updates, or quality review.
Provisional does not mean fabricated or unofficial. It means the responsible agency has not finished every review step. The status should travel with the value wherever it is displayed.
LakeRiverNow stores the source’s approval status and qualifiers with each observation. We do not remove a provisional label to make a page look more certain. When the source later publishes an approved value, an idempotent update can replace the provisional record while preserving ingestion history.
For legal, engineering, scientific, or other consequential uses, retrieve the official approved record and its metadata directly from the responsible agency.