Rhine · km 688.0
Cologne
Free-flowing The river runs free here, so the level is the constraint: this is where a drought actually binds a hull.
The lower-Rhine bellwether and the gauge German news coverage quotes. More water here than upstream — generally the last stretch to become impassable and the first to recover.
Right now
Cologne Rhine
60 cm falling 8 centimetres over 72 hours falling 8 cm over 72 hours
low on mean low/high water (MNW/MHW) · normal on navigational reference levels (NSW/HSW) — the publisher's own classification of its own reading.
34 cm below the 94 cm clear-line. Waterlogged clear-line, using an assumed 1.60 m draught.
Measured history, last 4 days · 60–72 cm
A Waterlogged clear-line is our own arithmetic: the gauge reading at which the published reference depth, minus the ship's draught and a fixed safety allowance, still leaves a comfortable margin. It is not an operator's decision rule and no cruise line uses it. Computed using an assumed 1.60 m draught unless a cruise line is selected. Reference basis on file: GlW referenced to 2002 (BfG 2026, Anlage A, Table A-1).
Official forecasts and notices for this gauge
Linking is not endorsement. The publisher controls its own page, its own values and its own terms.
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Official German federal 14-day water-level forecast — opens BfG
The German federal hydrology institute's own daily water-level forecast for the Rhine and other supported gauges, with BfG's own uncertainty ranges and caveats.
Waterlogged does not reproduce or interpret the values on this page. BfG's catalogue metadata asserts CC BY 4.0 but the delivery channels carry no unambiguous grant, so Waterlogged links to the forecast rather than copying, dailyising or scoring its values.
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Official German federal six-week outlook (weekly means) — opens BfG
BfG publishes this as a trend statement in weekly means, not as day-by-day cruise guidance. Open the official product to read BfG's own figures and caveats.
Waterlogged does not reproduce or interpret the values on this page. Same unresolved reuse basis as the 14-day product. Waterlogged does not convert weekly means into per-day levels or passenger probabilities.
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ELWIS — German federal waterways notices and navigation information
The official notices channel for commercial navigation on the German waterways: closures, lock works and high-water restrictions in the authority's own wording.
Waterlogged does not reproduce or interpret the values on this page. Linking needs no licence; the notice text remains governed by the publisher's terms, so Waterlogged does not scrape it into a report.
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PEGELONLINE — German federal waterways gauge service
The publisher of every German centimetre on this site, with its own station pages and its own classification of each reading.
History on this date
The five lowest years in this archive around this calendar date
Archive span: 2015 to 2023, in this archive · 5 eligible years.
| Year | Lowest in the window | On | Level at the end of the window | Measured 72-hour change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (this year) | 60 cm | — | 60 cm | -9 cm |
| 2022 | 73 cm | 2022-08-16 | 83 cm | 9 cm |
| 2018 | 111 cm | 2018-08-20 | 113 cm | -5 cm |
| 2023 | 138 cm | 2023-07-25 | 214 cm | -44 cm |
| 2015 | 141 cm | 2015-08-09 | 170 cm | -1 cm |
| 2020 | 152 cm | 2020-08-04 | 193 cm | 2 cm |
The window is the 14 days either side of today's calendar date. Years are ranked by their lowest measured daily mean inside it.
Measured PEGELONLINE/WSV stage data, licensed under Datenlizenz Deutschland – Zero – Version 2.0 (DL-DE/Zero-2.0).
- Measured daily means only; missing dates are omitted and gaps are never interpolated.
- This panel describes historical measurements and fitted seasonality, not a forecast.
- The day-of-year median is the fitted PEGELONLINE climatology in drift_params.json; it is not a projected level.
- Today's daily mean may represent a partial local civil day.
This is measured history, not a forecast and not an estimate of disruption probability.
Rain in the next 14 days
Status: rain forecast not yet enabled. Waterlogged shows forecast precipitation only under a paid Open-Meteo commercial contract, and no contract key is configured on this deployment. The official services linked below publish their own rain forecasts.
Rain may slow a fall or create a rise after losses and routing. Waterlogged does not convert this forecast into gauge centimetres or a cruise-disruption probability.
Read a rain forecast at the source
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Deutscher Wetterdienst — official German weather forecasts
Germany's national weather service forecast for the Rhine, Main, Moselle and Danube catchments.
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yr.no — free European rain forecasts (MET Norway / NRK)
A free public forecast covering the same catchments, if you want rain amounts today.
How rain becomes river level
What the measurements show
After rain ends, elevated levels at this gauge decay with a ~58-day summer half-life.
How quickly a departure from normal has faded, historically
- In the fitted winter runoff block, an elevated stage anomaly loses half of its remaining magnitude in about 31.0731 days as it relaxes toward the seasonal median.
- In the fitted summer recession block, an elevated stage anomaly loses half of its remaining magnitude in about 58.0414 days as it relaxes toward the seasonal median.
These are level-anomaly persistence figures fitted on measured stage — how long a departure from the seasonal middle has taken to halve. They are not rain-response coefficients and they do not convert rain into centimetres.
The block names are labels on a fitted split of the calendar, not seasons. The later block extends through the end of the year, so do not read its figure as a description of December.
Educational fitted-parameter explanation only; not a forecast or climate projection.
Source, licence and limits
- Source: PEGELONLINE (WSV) — terms of use.
- Measurement time: every reading on this page carries the time it was taken, and a stale reading is flagged rather than reused.
- Transformation: the level is the publisher's. The gap, where one is shown, is Waterlogged's arithmetic and is labelled as such.
- Reference-data note: approx — verify vs CCNR 2022-II-19 / KWD 2020
- Not for navigation. Nothing on this page should be used to plan the movement of a vessel.
Controlling gauge for the Lower Rhine (Emmerich–Cologne) leg that Amsterdam departures sail on day one.
Spotted something wrong? How to report a correction · the full source matrix · this gauge in the threshold diary.