Rhine · km 362.3
Maxau gauge — Rhine water levels
Held by locks Level held by locks. Weirs keep a working depth through a drought, so the risk on this stretch is high water and lock operations — not low water.
Upper Rhine near Karlsruhe, behind the barrage chain: a low reading here closes nothing. Our judgment is that it is still worth watching, because it is the first place an Alpine recovery shows up.
Right now
Maxau Rhine
302 cm falling 11 centimetres over 72 hours falling 11 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.
318 cm below the 620 cm first high-water mark (speed and wash limits, and the room under the bridges starts to run out).
The barrage chain holds the depth in a drought — but the locks still close at high water. Drought-proof is not flood-proof.
Official forecasts and notices for this gauge
Linking is not endorsement. The publisher controls its own page, its own values and its own terms.
The official forecast for this gauge
BfG publishes no 14-day forecast for this gauge.
BfG's 6-week outlook for Maxau BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-17
BfG's 6-week outlook for Maxau
Published by Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG). BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-17.
Each line is one whole week, which is how BfG publishes this product. It gives no figure for any single day, and neither do we.
| Week | Lower | Middle | Upper |
|---|---|---|---|
| 17–23 September | 291 | 301 | 311 |
| 24–30 September | 270 | 289 | 310 |
| 1–7 October | 263 | 312 | 367 |
| 8–14 October | 269 | 330 | 401 |
| 15–21 October | 284 | 345 | 416 |
| 22–28 October | 298 | 356 | 427 |
The three columns are BfG's own 5th, 50th and 95th percentiles from their weather-driven runs, in centimetres at the gauge.
Forecast water levels are from BfG. Waterlogged only reports historical and current data.
Every figure above is a water level at the gauge, in centimetres. It is not the depth of water under a ship and it is not a ship's draft.
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Maxau's own forecast page — opens the Baden-Württemberg flood forecast centre
Baden-Württemberg's flood forecast centre publishes the forecast for Maxau, not BfG. Open the Vorhersage tab: a forecast line runs about two days ahead in centimetres, and after that the chart switches to a wider trend estimate with a shaded band and a no-rain scenario, out to roughly two weeks. Read the band, not the middle of it.
Waterlogged does not reproduce or interpret the values on this page. LUBW holds the copyright and asks to be consulted before its figures are copied or shown again elsewhere, so this product is linked and never mirrored.
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Official German federal six-week outlook (weekly means) — opens BfG
BfG publishes this as a trend statement in weekly means, six weeks ahead, not as day-by-day cruise guidance. It reaches Maxau, Kaub and Cologne on the Rhine, Pfelling and Hofkirchen on the Danube, and Dresden on the Elbe. Open the official product to read BfG's own figures and caveats.
This product is CC BY 4.0. Waterlogged may show the weekly means with the exact credit “Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG)” and the forecast's own issue date and time from the CSV header. We do not turn weekly means into per-day levels or passenger chances.
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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. Its gauge pages also show the forecast for that gauge where a German authority publishes one, and leave the forecast column empty where none exists.
ELWIS content is OpenData. Commercial reuse is allowed only when the content is unchanged and credited “www.elwis.de”; ELWIS's own terms also permit links to its pages, as long as the source and the address “www.elwis.de” are named. Waterlogged may show a short quote word for word with that credit and a link. A paraphrase counts as an alteration, so we never rewrite notice content in our own words.
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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
History on this date
The same-date history panel for this gauge is not available in this build.
This is measured history, not a forecast and not an estimate of disruption probability.
Rain in the next 14 days
Rhine above Kaub — representative catchment precipitation.
3 days: 0.2 mm · 7 days: 0.2 mm · 14 days: 0.2 mm — forecast precipitation.
Rain forecast by Open-Meteo (commercial licence), model icon_seamless · fetched 20 September 2026 at 14:37 UTC · covering 14 days, 20 September to 3 October.
Weather data by Open-Meteo (commercial licence) · Representative catchment precipitation total from 8 weighted sampling points; a point sample, not an areal mean.
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.
Source, licence and limits
- Source: PEGELONLINE (WSV) — terms of use.
- Measurement time: every reading on this page shows 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.
Upper Rhine reference near Karlsruhe. Carried as CONTEXT for LOW water in v0: its reach (upper_rhine) is classed impounded, so Maxau cannot make a low-water call. Its high-water marks are live — an impounded reach still closes at HSW.
Spotted something wrong? How to report a correction · the full source matrix · this gauge in the threshold diary.
Where this gauge fits
The Maxau gauge is one of the Rhine gauges we read. To see it next to the others, with the same reading and the same 72-hour move for each, read today's Rhine water levels.
Worried about a booking rather than a number? Will my river cruise be cancelled because of low water? sets out what a low reading does and does not mean, and only the cruise line decides. To put these gauges against one particular sailing — your ports, in order, on your dates — start from the front page.