The free surface profile and outflow hydrograph for groundwater under conditions of steady uniform recharge followed by recession have been studied in viscous fluid model tests, using a sloping bed with a gradient of 0.2. The data have been compared with the nonlinear Boussinesq model and a modification of that model simulating the outflow seepage surface, obtained from a finite difference solution of the free boundary problem. It is shown that for a given bed slope, there is close to a linear relationship between outflow and storage raised to a power n, where n ranges from almost 2 for zero slopes to just above 1 at a gradient of 0.3. There is also a simple relationship between outflow and storage in the final stage of recession, when a drainage front occurs on the bed. These results lead to simple algorithms for prediction of the outflow under unsteady recharge conditions.