Latest readings: Monday 7 September 2026. Water levels change daily. Check again closer to your departure.
The Daily River Watch
Monday 7 September 2026
River levels this morning — not the levels expected on your sailing dates
Rain check: about 20 mm of rain is forecast above Pfelling over fourteen days. Budapest gets almost none. The forecast reaches 20 September. It does not change any status on this page.
1port far below the line
2ports below the line
0ports above the line
1port on lock-controlled reaches
1port with no line to compare
0ports on stretches we watch no gauge on
0ports with no river transit recorded
0ports where the ship is not sailing
What the statuses mean — each one is measured against the level we estimate this ship needs
▼ Far below the lineThe measured level is under half of Waterlogged's reference line for this ship.
▼ Below the lineThe measured level is below Waterlogged's reference line for this ship. It is not yet under half that level.
✓ Above the lineThe measured level is at or above Waterlogged's reference line for this ship.
⚓ Lock-controlledLocks hold the level on this stretch, so low water rarely stops a ship here. High water,
maintenance, closures, restrictions on the locks and the cruise line's own decision can still affect a day.
— No line publishedThe reading is real. Nobody publishes a level for this stretch to measure it against.
— No reading yetWe include this location on your daily schedule but there is no data available.
— No gauge on this stretchWe watch no gauge on this stretch of river. There is no reading for the day and no line
to measure one against. We are not telling you the water is fine, and we are not telling you anything
holds it at a working level — those are things we have not established here.
⚑ In portThe ship is in port on this day. Our record holds no river transit for it, so there is
no stretch of river to read. That is what we hold, not a claim about where the ship goes.
⌂ Not sailingThe ship does not sail on this day. Your itinerary spends it on land, so there is no
river level to read and no low-water question to answer.
A gauge level is not the depth of the navigable channel, not the room under your ship's keel,
and not your ship's draft. The rain forecast further down uses one more status of its own,
temporarily unavailable, when that feed is missing or out of date.
The official forward outlook
Waterlogged does not provide its own independent future river depth forecast. We show
today's gauge reading and compare them with our own reference lines and other historic
data. Where Waterlogged has received licenses, it includes river forecasts and clearly
identifies the sources where they are from. Waterlogged provides direct links to the gauge
forecasts from national providers. BfG has given us permission to show their six week
forecasts.
Your daily sailing schedule
Below are the ports you travel to and the depth of the water, as of today's date, and how much
water is needed for your ship to sail. A graph shows the median or normal river depth.
Two words will help. A A riverside station that measures the water level in centimetres against a fixed zero point. is a riverside station that
measures water level. Your ship's How deep a ship sits in the water. That depth sets how much water it needs underneath. is how deep it sits
in the water. This affects how much water it needs below the hull.
Day1–2
Budapest
Sat 26 – Sun 27 September · Hungary
⚓Lock-controlled
Locks hold this water at a working level, so low water is far less likely to affect this stretch. Other things still can.
Locks hold the level here, so low water rarely stops a ship.
Full details
The water here is held at a working level by locks. Rainfall does not set it.
What sets the level
locks
Kind of water
a reach held at a working level by locks
Level reading
no level reading is published for this stretch
Sensitive to low water
far less than a free-flowing stretch
Low water does not close this stretch of river; a lock failure or a flood would. High water,
maintenance, a closure or a restriction on the locks can still affect a day here, and so can the cruise
line's own decision.
Official forecast: Germany's official waterway service for forecasts, restrictions and notices to skippers. — German federal waterway notices
Published by Germany's federal waterways and shipping administration. It publishes notices through ELWIS. / ELWIS.
No water-level product applies to this day. This water is held at a working level by locks, so there is no gauge reading that would change your day.
What can affect a day like this is a lock outage or maintenance closure. That is announced through ELWIS, the official notices-to-skippers channel — in the authority's own words, before anyone else repeats them.
For this day, check the official notices rather than the levels.
The measured level is under half of Waterlogged's reference line for this ship.
960192 cm
Scale 0–250 cm
51 cm below Waterlogged’s reference line
That is how far today's measured level sits below the line we estimate this ship needs.
The level it is measured against is our own estimate, not a figure from the cruise line.
Water level now (7 September)
9 cm
Waterlogged’s Waterlogged's estimated level for this stretch, set from the measured record rather than from any ship's draught. In 35 years of readings, every day of the cruise season below it fell inside a disruption somebody documented at the time. It is a gauge level, not a depth under a ship, and no authority or cruise line publishes it.
60 cm
Normal for 28 September (median for 1991–2025)
192 cm
⬇Falling — the river level fell 27 cm in the last three days.
On the record: For 1991–2025, we checked the eleven days around this date. Budapest’s lowest daily average was 71 cm, in 2015. Today’s reading is 9. That is below every one of the 385 readings in that window.
Water levels are measured at the Budapest gauge – Observation from Hungary's national water authority. Its forecasting service publishes the Budapest table. / General Directorate of Water Management, provided through The European River Information Services portal. It republishes official river data from member countries.. Waterlogged estimated level — our own level for this stretch, set from 35 years of records: every cruise-season day below it fell within a documented disruption. No authority publishes a figure here.
Current level
Past average for this date
WLSN — Waterlogged’s Waterlogged's estimated level for this stretch, set from the measured record rather than from any ship's draught. In 35 years of readings, every day of the cruise season below it fell inside a disruption somebody documented at the time. It is a gauge level, not a depth under a ship, and no authority or cruise line publishes it. (60 cm)
Measured level below that line
EuRIS official water-level prediction for Budapest, from originator Országos Vízügyi Főigazgatóság (OVF) · Waterlogged retrieved this prediction: 7 Sep 2026, 18:16 CEST · API/Service Hydrometeo v3 incorporated from EuRIS (eurisportal.eu) · Országos Vízügyi Főigazgatóság (OVF) / General Directorate of Water Management
Current and normal water levels. The solid blue line shows the current measured water level. The dashed grey line is the historic average of the water level from July 30th until December 2nd. The bold dashed line labelled WLSN is the water level the ship needs — Waterlogged's reference line for this ship: 60 cm. It is a gauge level, not a depth under the hull. Today's water sits 190 cm below the normal water level for this date. During your shaded cruise dates the normal water level is 194 cm on 26 September and 188 cm on 3 October. The water level at this location historically keeps falling over the next three months.
The official prediction for this gauge
📈EuRIS official water-level prediction for Budapest Waterlogged retrieved this prediction: 7 Sep 2026, 18:16 CEST
EuRIS official water-level prediction for Budapest
API/Service Hydrometeo v3 incorporated from EuRIS (eurisportal.eu).
Waterlogged retrieved this prediction: 7 Sep 2026, 18:16 CEST.
Országos Vízügyi Főigazgatóság (OVF) / General Directorate of Water Management — EuRIS names Országos Vízügyi Főigazgatóság (OVF) as the source of this gauge series.
EuRIS publishes no issue time with this prediction, so the time above is when we retrieved it, not when EuRIS made it.
EuRIS's own predicted figures for Budapest, in cm at the gauge.
Time at the gauge
Water level (cm)
Tue 8 Sep, 01:00
6
Tue 8 Sep, 07:00
5
Tue 8 Sep, 13:00
5
Tue 8 Sep, 19:00
5
Wed 9 Sep, 01:00
5
Wed 9 Sep, 07:00
5
Wed 9 Sep, 13:00
6
Wed 9 Sep, 19:00
8
Thu 10 Sep, 01:00
9
Thu 10 Sep, 07:00
10
Thu 10 Sep, 13:00
12
Thu 10 Sep, 19:00
14
Fri 11 Sep, 01:00
17
Fri 11 Sep, 07:00
21
Fri 11 Sep, 13:00
27
Fri 11 Sep, 19:00
33
Sat 12 Sep, 01:00
38
Sat 12 Sep, 07:00
41
Sat 12 Sep, 13:00
45
Sat 12 Sep, 19:00
46
Sun 13 Sep, 01:00
46
Sun 13 Sep, 07:00
45
22 figures, from Tue 8 Sep, 01:00 to Sun 13 Sep, 07:00, in local time at the gauge.
Every figure is EuRIS's own, in centimetres at the gauge. Nothing between two figures is filled in by us, and nothing is added beyond the last one.
EuRIS prediction run 7b297e1b-cdc9-4a51-854b-8feddee4e468.
Predicted water levels are from EuRIS. 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.
Official forecast: Hungary's national water authority. Its forecasting service publishes the Budapest table. water-level forecast for Budapest
Published by Országos Vízjelző Szolgálat (The Hungarian national forecasting service. It publishes the Budapest forecast under OVF.), Hungary’s national forecasting service, under OVF.
The button below opens the official water-level forecast for this stretch — a simple table, about six days ahead. It shows the level in centimetres at the Budapest gauge, the same way this page shows it, so the numbers line up directly.
Don't be surprised by a negative number: the gauge's zero point sits above the riverbed, so readings below zero are real measurements, not errors.
As you read the forecast, compare each day's number with the Waterlogged's estimated level for this stretch, set from the measured record rather than from any ship's draught. In 35 years of readings, every day of the cruise season below it fell inside a disruption somebody documented at the time. It is a gauge level, not a depth under a ship, and no authority or cruise line publishes it. line — our estimated level for this stretch, set from 35 years of records: every cruise-season day below it fell within a documented disruption. That estimate is ours alone: no cruise line or authority publishes an official figure here.
This is a real reading. There is nothing published to measure it against.
115246 cm
Scale 0–300 cm
115 cm measured
Nobody publishes a target level for this stretch, so there is nothing to measure the reading against. We show the reading and the direction, and nothing more.
Water level now (7 September)
115 cm
Normal for 30 September (median for 2002–2026)
246 cm
⬆Rising — the river level rose 2 cm in the last three days.
Water levels are measured at the Kienstock gauge – Observation from Austria's government-owned waterway company for the Danube., provided through The European River Information Services portal. It republishes official river data from member countries.. No official data — the reading is official; there is simply nothing published to compare it against.
Current level
Past average for this date
Measured level below that line
EuRIS official water-level prediction for Kienstock, from originator viadonau · Waterlogged retrieved this prediction: 7 Sep 2026, 18:16 CEST · API/Service Hydrometeo v3 incorporated from EuRIS (eurisportal.eu) · Quelle: viadonau
Current and normal water levels. The solid blue line shows the current measured water level. The dashed grey line is the historic average of the water level from July 30th until December 2nd. Today's water sits 161 cm below the normal water level for this date. During your shaded cruise dates the normal water level is 248 cm on 26 September and 241 cm on 3 October. The water level at this location historically keeps falling over the next three months.
The official prediction for this gauge
📈EuRIS official water-level prediction for Kienstock Waterlogged retrieved this prediction: 7 Sep 2026, 18:16 CEST
EuRIS official water-level prediction for Kienstock
API/Service Hydrometeo v3 incorporated from EuRIS (eurisportal.eu).
Waterlogged retrieved this prediction: 7 Sep 2026, 18:16 CEST.
Quelle: viadonau — EuRIS names viadonau as the source of this gauge series.
EuRIS publishes no issue time with this prediction, so the time above is when we retrieved it, not when EuRIS made it.
EuRIS's own predicted figures for Kienstock, in cm at the gauge.
Time at the gauge
Water level (cm)
Mon 7 Sep, 18:00
115
Mon 7 Sep, 19:00
115
Mon 7 Sep, 20:00
115
Mon 7 Sep, 21:00
115
Mon 7 Sep, 22:00
115
Mon 7 Sep, 23:00
114
Tue 8 Sep, 00:00
114
Tue 8 Sep, 01:00
114
Tue 8 Sep, 02:00
114
Tue 8 Sep, 03:00
114
Tue 8 Sep, 04:00
114
Tue 8 Sep, 05:00
114
Tue 8 Sep, 06:00
115
Tue 8 Sep, 07:00
116
Tue 8 Sep, 08:00
116
Tue 8 Sep, 09:00
117
Tue 8 Sep, 10:00
118
Tue 8 Sep, 11:00
119
Tue 8 Sep, 12:00
119
Tue 8 Sep, 13:00
120
Tue 8 Sep, 14:00
121
Tue 8 Sep, 15:00
121
Tue 8 Sep, 16:00
122
Tue 8 Sep, 17:00
122
Tue 8 Sep, 18:00
122
Tue 8 Sep, 19:00
122
Tue 8 Sep, 20:00
122
Tue 8 Sep, 21:00
122
Tue 8 Sep, 22:00
122
Tue 8 Sep, 23:00
121
Wed 9 Sep, 00:00
121
Wed 9 Sep, 01:00
120
Wed 9 Sep, 02:00
120
Wed 9 Sep, 03:00
119
Wed 9 Sep, 04:00
119
Wed 9 Sep, 05:00
119
Wed 9 Sep, 06:00
118
Wed 9 Sep, 07:00
118
Wed 9 Sep, 08:00
118
Wed 9 Sep, 09:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 10:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 11:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 12:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 13:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 14:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 15:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 16:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 17:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 18:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 19:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 20:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 21:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 22:00
117
Wed 9 Sep, 23:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 00:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 01:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 02:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 03:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 04:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 05:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 06:00
117
Thu 10 Sep, 07:00
118
Thu 10 Sep, 08:00
118
Thu 10 Sep, 09:00
119
Thu 10 Sep, 10:00
120
Thu 10 Sep, 11:00
121
Thu 10 Sep, 12:00
122
Thu 10 Sep, 13:00
123
Thu 10 Sep, 14:00
124
Thu 10 Sep, 15:00
125
Thu 10 Sep, 16:00
126
Thu 10 Sep, 17:00
126
72 figures, from Mon 7 Sep, 18:00 to Thu 10 Sep, 17:00, in local time at the gauge.
Every figure is EuRIS's own, in centimetres at the gauge. Nothing between two figures is filled in by us, and nothing is added beyond the last one.
EuRIS prediction run dca61795-2a7d-479a-8236-60f37e5f92dc.
Predicted water levels are from EuRIS. 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.
Official forecast: Austria's Danube River Information Services site for water levels and navigation notices. station page — Kienstock, the Wachau reference gauge
Published by Austria's government-owned waterway company for the Danube., the Austrian waterway company, through DoRIS.
No German federal product covers the Austrian Danube. Austria's own navigation service publishes a Kienstock page in English. Its graph also shows a forward series.
On that graph the measured line is labelled The German word on the Austrian graph for the measured water level.. The forward one is labelled The German word on the Austrian graph for the forward-looking values.. The forward values run several days ahead. Austria notes that Kienstock forecasts are meant for low-water situations.
Then stop looking for a target level, because there is not one. Austria publishes a An Austrian low-water reference level. It gives no depth a ship can use. figure for Kienstock but no A depth an authority aims to keep available for ships along a stretch. figure to pair with it. A level without a depth cannot be turned into a target for your ship, and we will not invent one.
What you can read is the direction of change. You also know that locks keep this stretch full anyway.
The measured level is below the published low-water reference for this stretch.
213290308 cm
Scale 0–500 cm
77 cm below Waterlogged’s reference line
That is how far today's measured level sits below the line we estimate this ship needs.
The level it is measured against is our own estimate, not a figure from the cruise line.
Water level now (7 September)
213 cm
Published An authority's published low-level mark for a stretch. It is not a requirement for your ship. for this stretch
290 cm
Normal for 1 October (median for 2015–2026)
308 cm
⬇Falling — the river level fell 8 cm in the last three days.
On the record: For 2015–2025, we checked the eleven days around this date. Pfelling’s lowest daily average was 248 cm, in 2018. Today’s reading is 213. That is below every one of the 121 readings in that window.
Water levels are measured at the Pfelling gauge – German federal waterways gauge service (PEGELONLINE). Published low-water reference — the waterway authority's own figure for this stretch, not a requirement set by your cruise line.
Current level
Past average for this date
WLSN — Published An authority's published low-level mark for a stretch. It is not a requirement for your ship. for this stretch (290 cm)
Measured level below that line
BfG’s own 6-week outlook: one block for each whole published week · the tops of 4 weeks' ranges run past the top of this frame · BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-03 · Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG)
Current and normal water levels. The solid blue line shows the current measured water level. The dashed grey line is the historic average of the water level from July 30th until December 2nd. The bold dashed line labelled WLSN is the water level the ship needs — Waterlogged's reference line for this ship: 290 cm. It is a gauge level, not a depth under the hull. Today's water sits 89 cm below the normal water level for this date. During your shaded cruise dates the normal water level is 308 cm on 26 September and 308 cm on 3 October. The water level at this location historically keeps rising over the next three months.
The official forecast for this gauge
BfG publishes no 14-day forecast for this gauge.
📊BfG's 6-week outlook for Pfelling BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-03
BfG's 6-week outlook for Pfelling
Published by Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG).
BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-03.
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.
BfG's own weekly figures for Pfelling, in cm at the gauge.
Week
Lower
Middle
Upper
3–9 September
159
177
198
10–16 September
126
191
301
17–23 September
113
227
488
24–30 September
97
202
452
1–7 October
102
203
433
8–14 October
106
206
428
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.
Official forecast: BfG six-week outlook for Pfelling — likely ranges for each week
Published by Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG).
Nothing published today can tell you the level on 1 October.Germany's federal hydrology institute. It publishes the official water-level forecasts and outlooks.'s daily forecast only reaches fourteen days ahead. Your call here is 24 days away. We have picked the product that does reach it, so you do not have to.
That product is BfG's six-week outlook. It is not a daily prediction. It shows likely ranges for each week. Each range is where that week's level is expected to fall, with the odds attached. The ranges come from many past-weather what-if runs, not from a single-line prediction.
The button below opens Pfelling's own sheet directly. Find the week beginning 28 September. Then read which band it sits in against the 290 cm line on this page.
From 17 September, this port will be fourteen days away. The daily forecast will then reach your date, and this block will switch itself over to it.
The measured level is below the published low-water reference for this stretch.
213290309 cm
Scale 0–500 cm
77 cm below Waterlogged’s reference line
That is how far today's measured level sits below the line we estimate this ship needs.
The level it is measured against is our own estimate, not a figure from the cruise line.
Water level now (7 September)
213 cm
Published An authority's published low-level mark for a stretch. It is not a requirement for your ship. for this stretch
290 cm
Normal for 2 October (median for 2015–2026)
309 cm
⬇Falling — the river level fell 8 cm in the last three days.
On the record: For 2015–2025, we checked the eleven days around this date. Pfelling’s lowest daily average was 248 cm, in 2018. Today’s reading is 213. That is below every one of the 121 readings in that window.
Water levels are measured at the Pfelling gauge – German federal waterways gauge service (PEGELONLINE). Published low-water reference — the waterway authority's own figure for this stretch, not a requirement set by your cruise line.
Current level
Past average for this date
WLSN — Published An authority's published low-level mark for a stretch. It is not a requirement for your ship. for this stretch (290 cm)
Measured level below that line
BfG’s own 6-week outlook: one block for each whole published week · the tops of 4 weeks' ranges run past the top of this frame · BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-03 · Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG)
Current and normal water levels. The solid blue line shows the current measured water level. The dashed grey line is the historic average of the water level from July 30th until December 2nd. The bold dashed line labelled WLSN is the water level the ship needs — Waterlogged's reference line for this ship: 290 cm. It is a gauge level, not a depth under the hull. Today's water sits 89 cm below the normal water level for this date. During your shaded cruise dates the normal water level is 308 cm on 26 September and 308 cm on 3 October. The water level at this location historically keeps rising over the next three months.
The official forecast for this gauge
BfG publishes no 14-day forecast for this gauge.
📊BfG's 6-week outlook for Pfelling BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-03
BfG's 6-week outlook for Pfelling
Published by Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG).
BfG issued this forecast: 2026-09-03.
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.
BfG's own weekly figures for Pfelling, in cm at the gauge.
Week
Lower
Middle
Upper
3–9 September
159
177
198
10–16 September
126
191
301
17–23 September
113
227
488
24–30 September
97
202
452
1–7 October
102
203
433
8–14 October
106
206
428
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.
Official forecast: BfG six-week outlook for Pfelling — likely ranges for each week
Published by Bundesanstalt für Gewässerkunde (BfG).
Nothing published today can tell you the level on 2 October.Germany's federal hydrology institute. It publishes the official water-level forecasts and outlooks.'s daily forecast only reaches fourteen days ahead. Your call here is 25 days away. We have picked the product that does reach it, so you do not have to.
That product is BfG's six-week outlook. It is not a daily prediction. It shows likely ranges for each week. Each range is where that week's level is expected to fall, with the odds attached. The ranges come from many past-weather what-if runs, not from a single-line prediction.
The button below opens Pfelling's own sheet directly. Find the week beginning 28 September. Then read which band it sits in against the 290 cm line on this page.
From 18 September, this port will be fourteen days away. The daily forecast will then reach your date, and this block will switch itself over to it.
Rain forecast by Open-Meteo (commercial licence) · fetched 7 September 2026 at 05:16 UTC · covering 14 days, 7 September to 20 September.
Rain can raise the water level of a river but there is no fixed rule on how much it does.
We only report how much the quantity of rainfall has changed the water level before under
similar conditions. It is context, not a prediction of a river level.
●Licensed rain forecast + what the water level has actually done before
The detailed weather forecast for your route
All rain forecasts use the same scale, 0–12 mm of rain a day, so you
can compare them directly. Each column is one day, with its date at the top, then the sky for
that day and the daily high in °C.
Rain forecast by Open-Meteo (commercial licence) · fetched 7 September 2026 at 05:16 UTC · covering 14 days, 7 September to 20 September.
Rain forecast by Open-Meteo (commercial licence) · fetched 7 September 2026 at 05:16 UTC · covering 14 days, 7 September to 20 September.
In our 25 years of Budapest records, the water level has never risen more than a few centimetres after rain this light. Today’s level sits 183 cm below normal for the date. Rain like this does not change that.
This is our reading of the rain forecast, based on what rain has actually done to this river in past years. It is not an official river forecast.
Rain forecast by Open-Meteo (commercial licence) · fetched 7 September 2026 at 05:16 UTC · covering 14 days, 7 September to 20 September.
At Kienstock the water sits behind A dam built across the river that holds the water above it at a set level. Where one stands, the depth is set by the dam, not by rain., so the dams set this level, not the rain. Rain of this size has changed the water level here in past years without changing anything about getting through.
This is our reading of the rain forecast, based on what rain has actually done to this river in past years. It is not an official river forecast.
Rain forecast by Open-Meteo (commercial licence) · fetched 7 September 2026 at 05:16 UTC · covering 14 days, 7 September to 20 September.
Rain drains away faster here than on the Rhine. At Pfelling the extra height from rain is usually half gone in about 16 days. At Kaub it lasts much longer — about 55. In past years this much rain, landing on a river already this low, held the level steady for a week or so. It did not close a gap of 77 cm.
This is our reading of the rain forecast, based on what rain has actually done to this river in past years. It is not an official river forecast.
The rest of your route
Locks and A dam built across the river that holds the water above it at a set level. Where one stands, the depth is set by the dam, not by rain. hold the water level at a set height at
Budapest. So rain is not a river question at these ports.
That is why none of these has a rain forecast. What is left is the weather
for your day in town.
the same days · 7 September to 20 September · daily highs in °C
Rain forecast by Open-Meteo (commercial licence) · fetched 7 September 2026 at 05:16 UTC · covering 14 days, 7 September to 20 September.
How rain reaches the river — the rules we use
the stages, the half-lives and the 2003 warning behind every line above
How rain becomes a water level
A river responds to rain in stages. A nearby shower may matter less than rain far upstream.
Rain fallsWhere the rain lands matters as much as the total.
Ground takes a shareDry ground can hold most of the first rain.
Tributaries bring it downWater arrives from different Side rivers and streams that feed the main river at different times. at different times.
The gauge gets a pulseA A short rise that has travelled downstream after rain further up the river. can briefly raise the level at the gauge.
Baseflow settles itThe slow supply of stored water that keeps a river running between periods of rain. is the slower supply of stored water. It decides where the level settles.
Why winter rain often does more
Winter ground is usually wetter and cooler. Plants use less water then. Less water also
evaporates. More of the same rain can reach the river. In high summer, dry soil and growing
plants take more water first. Less water then flows over the land into the river.
What "half-life" means here
The How long half of an unusual water-level difference has historically taken to fade. is based on past records. It is the time for half the extra
height above the usual seasonal level to fade. It describes persistence, not how many
centimetres a storm will add.
Estimated half-life of unusual levels at eligible route gauges
Read the difference carefully. A longer summer value at the
Rhine gauges does not mean summer rain adds more water. It means an unusual measured level faded more
slowly in that set of calendar dates. The block names come from the parameter file; they are not
weather seasons or a rain-to-level formula.
Rules of thumb
Use these to read a wet outlook — not to predict a sailing-day level.
After a long dry period, the first roughly 10 mm may mainly soak the
soil. Do not expect much change at the gauge before that.
Source: waterlogged/rain_explainer.py → transfer_function.soil_absorption_first_mm.value_mm = 10; explicitly qualitative, not a fitted gauge coefficient.
Look downstream after about 1 day Basel–Maxau, 1–1½ days
Maxau–Kaub and ½–1 day Kaub–Cologne; Austrian Danube events spanned
60–118 hours, so there is no honest fixed Danube clock.
Sources: docs/council_alignment/lens_hydrology.md gives Rhine flood-wave and falling-water travel times. docs/climate_evidence_wide_signals.md gives the "Travel time & Alpine share" event range and the no-fixed-lag rule.
A routed rain pulse can briefly raise a gauge. Baseflow is the slower supply
of stored water. It decides where the level settles.
Source: waterlogged/rain_explainer.py gives the wording about a rain pulse in each season. The figures in the table above are the fitted half_life_days from drift_params.json.
That is the calculation you have just read. The licence turns this panel from
a list of links into a daily reading. It still stops where the evidence stops.
How to read every number on this page
"Water level now" is the authority's measured reading at the gauge named on this page. It uses centimetres from that The fixed zero point for a gauge's centimetre scale. It can sit above the riverbed.. It is a level, not a depth of water under your ship. It is not the depth of the The navigable channel where ships are meant to pass. either, and it is not your ship's How deep a ship sits in the water. That depth sets how much water it needs underneath..
"Water level the ship needs" — written WLSN at each end of its bold dashed line on the graphs — is Waterlogged's own arithmetic on published reference figures for that stretch and the draft we hold for this ship. It is our line, plainly labelled, and it is not the operator's decision to sail.
The seasonal graph shows two different things. Left of the today line, solid blue shows the levels that were measured. Right of it, the dashed line shows the historical average for each date. It comes from what these gauges recorded on that date in past years. It is not a forecast of this autumn, and we do not draw one. We show it because that average keeps falling through October. That is useful to know before you sail.
Where a line comes from the record — Budapest — the page says so. There is still no maintained-depth model published for the Hungarian Danube, so instead of guessing at one we set our level from what actually happened: in 35 years of readings, every cruise-season day below it fell within a disruption somebody documented at the time.
Where no mark exists — Kienstock — we show the reading and the official marks and stop there.
Where the numbers come from. Measured levels for Kaub, Cologne, Pfelling and
Hofkirchen are verified daily averages from Germany's official service for live and archived federal waterway gauge readings.. They cover 2015–2026 and
are topped up from the live archive. Budapest and Kienstock readings come through The European River Information Services portal. It republishes official river data from member countries.
and Austria's Danube River Information Services site for water levels and navigation notices.. For those two the solid line on the graph is drawn from our own recording of
that live feed, which began in July 2026, so it is short and grows by a day each day; the graph says where it starts.
The longer measured archive behind Kienstock is not ours to republish, so we do not draw it and we print no
record sentence for it. For Budapest that changed on 17 August 2026: the General Directorate of Water Management
gave us written permission to publish its own archive, and the average for each date now stands on
35 years of it. Each "normal for this date"
uses a 31-day circular The middle past value for that date. Half of past years were higher and half were lower. — the middle value, so half of past years were
higher and half lower. The averages use 12 years of records on the German gauges,
35 years on Budapest and 25 years on Kienstock, from the projection engine's own
doy_median_cm arrays. Record lines use an eleven-day window centred on the port's own date, across each
gauge's whole archive. Budapest's levels come from Országos Vízügyi Főigazgatóság (OVF) / General Directorate of
Water Management; where we work them into an average, those input data originate from the General Directorate of
Water Management.
Nothing here is a forecast. The trend and the graph describe measured moves that have already happened. We do not model your cruise and we do not give you a percentage chance of anything.
The numbers on this page stay free.
You are not paying for anything. The daily update — which includes a river companion on your sailing — is free to your inbox.
If you want us to read this sailing every morning and send it to your inbox, the Daily River Log Watch is free for your sailing. Nothing to pay, nothing renews. The last morning is the morning after you leave the ship.
Every morning until the morning after you leave the ship: the reading on the gauge that governs your stretch, what changed overnight, and the river companion — the story of the water you are sailing on. Free.
Keep my email for this sailing only, so Waterlogged can send me the Daily River Log Watch for it each morning, free, until the morning after the sailing ends. No marketing and no sale of my address. Stop any time by replying stop, or delete my address on request; it is deleted no later than 180 days after the scheduled sailing. Privacy details: /privacy.
