Rhine water levels 2024 and similar topics

[notamermaid]

Well, we have our river back. Maxau gauge peaked last night and went down well during the night. The figure now is 738cm. The authorities gave the go-head early this morning, river traffic is running again. This was just under 24 hours I think, the expectation a few days ago had been about 36 hours of no traffic. All good.

 

Time to relax? I would say so, with a caveat. Not perfect sailing conditions, regulations for high water apply. But it is better, we are going into summer with normally very warm days, snow melt is still happening but overall the situation looks stable at a very high level. With a couple of days of downpours we may need to watch Maxau again, as there is a lot of water in the basin of the High Rhine with its tributaries coming from Switzerland.

 

Lake Constance is of course still at flooding level but appears to be stable, with the prospect of gradually going down from later today. By that I mean a centimetre or two per day.

 

That small wave at Maxau gauge has no real impact further downstream. By the time it gets to the Middle Rhine valley it is no more than standard "up and down" due to rain.

 

A couple of graphs to follow later when we have a look back at May.

 

notamermaid

 

[NCvol24]

2 hours ago, notamermaid said:

Well, we have our river back. Maxau gauge peaked last night and went down well during the night. The figure now is 738cm. The authorities gave the go-head early this morning, river traffic is running again. This was just under 24 hours I think, the expectation a few days ago had been about 36 hours of no traffic. All good.

 

Time to relax? I would say so, with a caveat. Not perfect sailing conditions, regulations for high water apply. But it is better, we are going into summer with normally very warm days, snow melt is still happening but overall the situation looks stable at a very high level. With a couple of days of downpours we may need to watch Maxau again, as there is a lot of water in the basin of the High Rhine with its tributaries coming from Switzerland.

 

Lake Constance is of course still at flooding level but appears to be stable, with the prospect of gradually going down from later today. By that I mean a centimetre or two per day.

 

That small wave at Maxau gauge has no real impact further downstream. By the time it gets to the Middle Rhine valley it is no more than standard "up and down" due to rain.

 

A couple of graphs to follow later when we have a look back at May.

 

notamermaid

 

Relaxing 😁 Thanks for a very good update!

[notamermaid]

So last night I also checked on the Emerald Dawn with @Dwg7127 on board. The ship arrived at Rüdesheim last night, here is the screenshot of the webcam, time stamp 18:50:

 

This morning she left for Koblenz and sailed into the Rhine Gorge. I hope the passengers have all had a splendid time seeing the castles.

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

 

 

[notamermaid]

As I said earlier today, it may be that we can now relax a bit about river levels but, more out of curiosity, I have had a look at the probability chart for Kaub gauge where we can check what the computer modelling thinks will happen up to 14 days into the future. It gives steady figures, at a high range, all over 300cm but nothing that looks suspiciously high or indicating a fast rise.

 

Which just leaves the situation in May to be summed up.

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

[NCvol24]

11 hours ago, notamermaid said:

So last night I also checked on the Emerald Dawn with @Dwg7127 on board. The ship arrived at Rüdesheim last night, here is the screenshot of the webcam, time stamp 18:50:

 

This morning she left for Koblenz and sailed into the Rhine Gorge. I hope the passengers have all had a splendid time seeing the castles.

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

 

 

We have made it to Koblenz this morning! We have been told we are sailing to Rudesheim this afternoon. 

[notamermaid]

11 hours ago, NCvol24 said:

We have made it to Koblenz this morning! We have been told we are sailing to Rudesheim this afternoon. 

It has been a nice afternoon, a bit on the cool side for June but good for photos with clouds in the sky for backdrop of the castles I think.

 

Hope you have had a splendid day.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

This has made the regional news along the Rhine. An accident at Boppard. Yesterday morning a river cruise ship tried to sail away from the dock which was a tight manoeuvre seeing that another ship was docked close by. It did not quite work and resulted in heavy damage. I do not know which ship it was as I cannot find a photo or footage that confirms the vessel. Here is a video of the local internet channel of Boppard, excursion boat landing stage destroyed, embankment wall damaged: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huJGLvsQC58

 

One online news article suggests it was a "very new" ship.

 

No one was injured.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

Let us assess the situation as it is right now and then have a look back at May. Lake Constance gauge is indeed going down now, very slowly. The High Rhine is partly still on flood alert and so is the river around Maxau gauge simply because it is high. This is flood vigilance but the gauge at Maxau is showing favourable figures going forward, meaning the situation will further ease but the river will stay high simply because Lake Constance and Switzerland are still draining at a high volume. Downstream roughly from Mannheim there is no flood vigilance. All good.

 

With some gauges being above navigational flood mark I there will be adjusted sailing but there should not be much impact on itineraries.

 

River cruise companies are still likely to make adjustments to itineraries to get the ones coming up back on track, i.e.ships in their correct ports.

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

[notamermaid]

The month of May on the Rhine. Part 1.

 

Note that I have made screenshots of May a bit late so that the first days are missing. As the graph shows 31 days this has then brought the days of heavy rain and rise from 31 May to 4 June into view. Let us start for a change with Lake Constance:

 

May started normally and there was a gradual rise which happens due to snow melt if I have understood it correctly. Snow melt is still happening now to a small extent in the Alps, i.e. the Alpine Rhine is getting the water that then feeds the Lake. At the end of May we see that fast rise due to the rain that hit the South of Germany. Most of the water went to the Danube catchment area as we know, but the two catchment areas are so close together not far from Lake Constance that some clouds made it to the tributaries Northeast of the Lake and to the Lake itself. Subsequently that volume of water had to drain into the High Rhine and past Basel to Maxau where by then more water had been supplied to the Rhine via the forest tributaries from the East.

 

This is the reaction at Maxau gauge:

It had been on a relatively high level due to a wet winter but April had brought the level back to almost the long-term mean. So May started well. Then there were a few rainy days. Most of the second half of the month the river was on navigational flood mark I. Then the rain came from the East/Northeast. With the river already being high, the fast rise brought it to mark II and the river traffic ban just after the end of the month.

 

Continued in part 2.

 

notamermaid

 

 

[notamermaid]

The month of May on the Rhine. Part 2.

 

By the time the river gets to the Middle Rhine valley, here meaning the Rhine Gorge with Kaub gauge, it has received water from two major tributaries, these are the Neckar and the Main. Flooding of either or both of them can make the situation worse at Kaub. In May we had the interesting constellation that the Neckar was flooding as it drains the hills that were at the West end of the circulating rain cloud weather front that brought so much trouble to the areas of the Upper Danube. The Main saw little of that weather mostly only bringing high volumes of water from right up its navigable course. These weather phenomenon almost completely broke off North of Mainz, bringing very little rain to the Middle Rhine valley itself. The Lower Rhine "only" needed to cope with what was brought to it from the Upper reaches with no higher volume of itself or its tributaries North of Koblenz. By the time the high volume of water came from Maxau, all the flooding had already drained from the Moselle. An incredibly lucky situation for Koblenz.

 

So this is what Kaub gauge looked like:

 

Just like at Maxau we see the reaction to the rain around the 16th and 17th of May. The graph then makes the jump like we see it at Maxau just after the end of the month, but exacerbated by the flooding of the Neckar. It lead to the short river traffic ban at the beginning of this month.

 

notamermaid

 

Edited June 13 by notamermaid
added info

[JYMM]

We will be cruising on the Rhine next month.  With summer and warming weather coming, will the high levels return to average levels?  Wondering if this flooding will reduce the risk of low water levels?  Thanks

[notamermaid]

Welcome to Cruisecritic.

 

17 minutes ago, JYMM said:

With summer and warming weather coming, will the high levels return to average levels?

Yes. This will take a bit of time and not happen within the next two weeks.

19 minutes ago, JYMM said:

Wondering if this flooding will reduce the risk of low water levels? 

Generally-speaking yes, as Lake Constance acts as a natural reservoir and is well filled at this time, but how things will go when the Lake has returned to normal we cannot know. So for a while the Lake will drain and keep the level high for longer than in a standard year. It looks to take well into July.

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

[Phutch9136]

Where Is the Viking Hild at the moment? Cannot seem to get accurate info from marine traffic but I have not created an account so that may be why. Looks like it’s been in Mainz for 3 days!  We sail from Basel to Trier July 1. Thank you for all your help over our 3 trips. Very informative 

[notamermaid]

1 hour ago, Phutch9136 said:

Where Is the Viking Hild at the moment? Cannot seem to get accurate info from marine traffic but I have not created an account so that may be why. Looks like it’s been in Mainz for 3 days!  We sail from Basel to Trier July 1. Thank you for all your help over our 3 trips. Very informative 

My pleasure. The Viking Hild is signalling in Koblenz:

 

notamermaid

 

[NCvol24]

On 6/13/2024 at 7:50 PM, notamermaid said:

It has been a nice afternoon, a bit on the cool side for June but good for photos with clouds in the sky for backdrop of the castles I think.

 

Hope you have had a splendid day.

 

notamermaid

 

It's definitely been cooler than expected everywhere on our trip, but I really can't complain! The sailing by the castles was just beautiful! 

 

We made it to Speyer today, and that itinerary spot could be X'd in my opinion. We are currently in route to Strasbourg. 

Edited June 14 by NCvol24

[victory2020]

With all this happening, do you all expect normal conditions by July 9th?

[Dwg7127]

Just disembarked the Emerald Dawn this morning in Amsterdam. Once we boarded last Saturday in Mannheim and with some north & south bus excursions we were essentially back on schedule. It was a difficult time for the cruise director to come up with alternate excursions but we were constantly informed of what the schedule was (not like pre-cruise when were ghosted). No rain until this morning. The boat appears to be fairly new and very quiet while cruising (big plus). I don’t know if the passengers boarding today will make it all the way to Basel but in any case they will be well taken care of.

Thank you Notamermaid for all your information.

[notamermaid]

22 hours ago, NCvol24 said:

It's definitely been cooler than expected everywhere on our trip, but I really can't complain! The sailing by the castles was just beautiful! 

 

We made it to Speyer today, and that itinerary spot could be X'd in my opinion. We are currently in route to Strasbourg. 

It really is a little cooler than we normally have it in June, I would say two to four degrees Celsius. Speyer is an interesting place, apart from the cathedral I would say the highlight is actually the visit to the Technical Museum. Perhaps you did not do that. The city definitely is not Strasbourg I admit. I still have not been to the Alsatian city but been to others in the area. I am sure you have enjoyed that greatly, have never read of anyone not doing so.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

11 hours ago, Dwg7127 said:

Thank you Notamermaid for all your information.

My pleasure. Thank you for saying hello from Amsterdam. Good to read of the efforts of Emerald to make it all work out well under the circumstances.

 

Have a pleasant trip home.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

18 hours ago, victory2020 said:

With all this happening, do you all expect normal conditions by July 9th?

We have relatively pleasant conditions now, at least up to Mannheim. A few areas have been affected by the flooding, i.e. shallows with additional vigilance. Compared to the Danube it is very little.

 

Lake Constance is still high but the conditions in the Upper Rhine valley and on the High Rhine are getting better by the day. The computer modelling is all going in the right direction and from what I can see I am confident that the rest of the month will continue to see improved conditions. Too early to say what July will be like but I would say we are far away from low water, meaning it is basically impossible to see that any time soon. Flooding is a scenario that is less and less likely to happen again with every passing day. Caveat is always a sudden change in weather.

 

notamermaid

 

 

[notamermaid]

On 6/7/2024 at 9:47 PM, notamermaid said:

The Treasures is now on the Main sailing through Frankfurt.

Just this one more topic to wrap up. The Treasures had been on the Amsterdam to Budapest itinerary and I thought she would be one of the first ships to be able to do the whole journey more or less in the scheduled time. Well - she didn't. I guess it was a ship swap that happened. In any case, she returned to the Rhine and arrived back in Amsterdam this morning.

 

With the Rhine improving by the day, the computer modelling looking promising, I think I will have a short rest here.

 

notamermaid

 

[Phutch9136]

Thanks you soooo much for your monitoring. Enjoy your pleasant weather and your rest

[NCvol24]

We have had a lovely trip! We are on our way to Basel to spend time in Switzerland for 5 days. The only hiccup I noticed was we had to dock early for Cologne as we wouldn't make it in time for the morning tours. We docked and were bused for 30 minutes. While exploring the city, our ship made it to Cologne. We made all stops and did not swap ships.

 

Thanks @notamermaid for all your information the past week, including your buts with the improvements! 

[notamermaid]

A quick hello to say that if you happen to be sailing along the Rhine you may bump into the odd football fan. 😉

 

The stadiums along the Rhine used for the European Football Cup matches are in Cologne, and Düsseldorf. Dortmund and Gelsenkirchen are in the Ruhr area, so a bit further away. Tonight it is Austria versus France in Düsseldorf.

 

notamermaid

 

[zot79]

Thank you so much @notamermaid for all of the information. We are heading to Basel next week for Viking B to A and are feeling more relaxed about it.

We almost hit the low river situation from the drought in September 2022 on our Viking Grand European. But wound up being one of the first ships to make it from Budapest to Amsterdam without major issues (I think we did a couple of odd dockings to get around some situtations).

The only notable issue was that our original ship could not meet us in Budapest, so we wound up with that ship's crew on a different ship. They had some fun trying to remember that they were on the Rolf and not Gefjon.