The river's logbook for cruise travellers
The honest answer is that we cannot tell you, and neither can anybody else selling you certainty. What we can do is show you the water.
Only the cruise line can answer that, and it will answer it much closer to the sailing date than you would like. Waterlogged does not know, does not guess, and will not tell you a percentage chance.
What we can do is show you the same thing the operator is watching: how much water is in the river today at the places your ship has to get through, and which way that number has moved over the last 72 hours.
No. Waterlogged does not provide a future river depth forecast. Every number on this site is a measurement that has already been taken.
The national authorities do publish forecasts, and we link to them by name so you can read the official product yourself. Official forecasts are linked, never copied or rescored.
Start with the reading for the gauge nearest the part of your route you care about, then look at the 72-hour move beside it. A number falling steadily for three days means something different from the same number after three days of rain.
Beside each reading we print the line for that stretch: the waterway authority's published low-water reference where one exists, or the level we estimate a river cruise ship needs. Where it is our estimate, the page says so — it is never a figure from the cruise line.
It is our arithmetic, not the operator's threshold. We work out roughly how much water a loaded river cruise ship wants under it at each gauge and print that as a line you can compare today's reading against.
It is our line, plainly labelled, and it is not the operator's decision to sail. A reading below it does not mean your cruise is cancelled, and a reading above it is not a promise that it will sail.
The pattern in the documents we have read is substitution rather than refund: swapping passengers between two ships moored either side of a shallow reach, running coaches to the next city and sailing from there, changing which city you join the ship at, or offering a credit against a future booking.
One example we hold the primary document for: in 2026 Avalon Waterways moved the start of a Danube itinerary from Nuremberg to Passau and offered a land-tour alternative instead. Another: a New South Wales court notice names 21 Scenic, Evergreen or Emerald-branded sailings alleged to have been disrupted by the 2018 drought. Scenic denies the allegations and we do not describe that case as resolved.
We keep the sourced reports on the reported disruptions page, each one with the document it came from. We publish an operator, ship or sailing only where the source we cite names it.
That is your decision and we are not qualified to make it for you. Nothing on this site is financial, legal, insurance, navigation or travel advice.
What we would say is that the question worth asking the operator before you book is a specific one: what applies to a missed cruising day, and get the answer in writing. What each line publishes is summarised on the operator documents page.
Today's measured readings, the 72-hour move and the official forecast links, one page per river:
To see those same gauges arranged against one particular sailing, start from the front page and pick your cruise line, your cruise and your departure date. The sourced reports of named disruption are on the reported disruptions page, and what each line publishes is on the operator documents page.