Danube water levels 2024 and similar topics - plus tips and info

[notamermaid]

Hello everyone,

 

here is the thread on the Danube for 2024.

 

We will look again at the weather and most importantly the river levels. Join us again this year with your comments and tips and share your excitement about cruising on this European river that flows through many countries on its long journey East.

 

Safe travels.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

Just a couple of ships are actually on itineraries now, a few more ships are still on their way to winter harbours. But let us have a quick look anyway at what the river is doing in Germany. The Danube area was partly on flooding status over New Year, but the situation has much improved. Pfelling gauge is at 432cm and Passau gauge is at 491cm. That is good. Room for snow melt is needed in a few weeks time.

 

The year did not start well for one river cruise company. During the flooding the Arosa Mia was scheduled to go on an itinerary. She was supposed to leave on 3 January for a four day trip from Passau. Engine problems caused the ship to be able to sail only slowly and the passengers could not have the cruise as planned. Part of it needed to be done by coach and the high water levels did not help with the more difficult navigation either. According to an online German website, the passengers got a 50 percent voucher for a future cruise.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

The temperatures are around zero in warm areas of Bavaria but colder during the night. Passau is a relatively warm spot so there is no snow on the ground now. Passau has a high quality webcam:

https://www.feratel.com/en/webcams/germany/passau.html

 

In the next 48 hours we will see a short and not strong rise of the river levels. All good. Next week the temperatures will rise and rain is forecast.

 

notamermaid

 

 

[notamermaid]

The flooding is basically through now on the Danube, it certainly was high and made some headlines, also internationally. "The Danube has burst its banks at Budapest" was one headline I saw. So I had a look around and found a video. "Okaayy", I thought, "that is correct but to my "Rhine river trained" eye, that really does not look like much". I think the embankment at Budapest is quite low down, i.e. many steps down to the water, so it is more than it looks when it floods. Where my ship docked the area was covered in water. I think that is what they call the lower quay. If that is correct than that corresponds to what the graph shows:

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/river-danube-bursts-its-banks-budapest-water-highest-since-2013-2023-12-28/

 

notamermaid

 

 

[HawaiiTraveler]

Happy New Year notamermaid…glad to see you have a continuation of this topic for 2024…we are returning to Budapest later this year for another Grand European Tour…we did this same cruise last year (2023) and have already booked to do it again this year…I look forward to seeing your valuable and insightful posts here this year…aloha!

[peppajay]

We will be doing our first river cruise with Travelmarvel leaving Budapest on 29th March. I found this thread late last year so will be following closely. 
Thank you Notamermaid for sharing your knowledge. 

[notamermaid]

8 hours ago, HawaiiTraveler said:

Happy New Year notamermaid…glad to see you have a continuation of this topic for 2024…

Hello again to you. Thank you for your wishes. Good to see you come to this thread but even better to read that you are coming back to the Danube. 🙂

 

Great that you enjoyed last year's travels so much and are returning.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

3 hours ago, peppajay said:

We will be doing our first river cruise with Travelmarvel leaving Budapest on 29th March. I found this thread late last year so will be following closely. 
Thank you Notamermaid for sharing your knowledge. 

Thank you for saying hello and good to read that you found last year's thread helpful.

 

I hope your first river cruise is all you wish for and you have a great time.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

The level of the Danube is slowly creeping up. But we should not see flooding. Bavaria has the grand divide of the watersheds so Northern parts of the state drain to the North(west), the Main carries the water to the Rhine. So right now we see more volume of water going in that direction rather than to the Danube basin. Passau gauge is at 516cm and unlikely to go over 600cm. Very few river cruise ships on the river of course.

 

Which brings me to the question: where are the river cruise ships? In winter harbours and usually out of the current of the river. A portion of the fleet goes to harbours on the Rhine but the Danube has several docks where the ships stay over winter. If you are interested, do some ship spotting, look for the clusters of blue dots on the map, this is Linz: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:14.272/centery:48.334/zoom:12

 

notamermaid

 

[peppajay]

Thank you for your kind wishes 😊. Using the above link it looks like our ship the Polaris is in Duisburg. 

[Canal archive]

What a mixture ARosa, Viking and Crystal Mozart to name but a few. Note one who’s name has not changed yet.

[notamermaid]

8 minutes ago, Canal archive said:

What a mixture ARosa, Viking and Crystal Mozart to name but a few. Note one who’s name has not changed yet.

We will see a couple more new ships on the Danube this year - it is a bit confusing as many ships of course sail both the Rhine and the Danube. So in addition to two more specific ships for the Danube a couple more names will likely appear over the course of the year coming over from the Rhine on an itinerary.

 

Three re-namings I have noticed in articles. Which one are you referring to?

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

Not to sure if Crystal Mozart is still under that name.

[notamermaid]

Ah, right. Odd one. She signals as Riverside Mozart but is still listed as Crystal Mozart in the pop-up details:

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

Wheels within wheels!

[notamermaid]

There has been high water on the German Danube but with so few ships sailing I have not reported on that. We will see it in the graph for January when we do a recap for the month.

 

The weather is frosty, mostly during the night. It will gradually get warmer in Bavaria during the week. There will be little to no snowfall or rain.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

During the flooding, early in the month, a headline caught my eye. The high levels of the Danube were receding in Germany but the flooding was extensive still in Hungary and further downstream. In Serbia cattle had got stranded on an island in the river. A rescue operation had to be organized. These are two articles on it: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67933641

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/farmers-serbia-scramble-rescue-animals-river-island-2024-01-10/

 

notamermaid

 

[JTor]

Thank you for these posts. We are taking our first river cruise Nov2024 from Budapest to Bucharest. Anything we should be monitoring on that part of the river? I always wanted to sail through the “Iron Gates” so will be disappointed if we go on a bus

[notamermaid]

22 hours ago, JTor said:

Anything we should be monitoring on that part of the river?

Thank you for saying hello. I myself am not familiar with that stretch of the river. It is different from Germany and Austria and weather patterns can be different, too. Of course, extensive flooding in the two countries will lead to at least some extend to flooding downstream, i.e. in Slovakia, Hungary and further. The graph in post #4 is taken from this website: https://www.hydroinfo.hu/en/hidinfo/hidinfo_graf_duna.html

You can look at this and see how the situation progresses throughout the year. And during the coming months I am sure river cruisers will post some info from their cruises beyond Budapest.

 

Not all river cruisers post on these pages, you will find some others in the roll calls. You could join your respective roll call or a combined roll call thread for the area and/or company.

 

Have a great cruise.

 

notamermaid

 

[notamermaid]

Exciting news. There was a big opening ceremony in Straubing on 25 January. The first section of river that has been altered to allow for more transport load on ships has been opened to traffic. Nine kilometres now have a deeper navigation channel. It is from Straubing to Bogen, that means from after the lock (on the left in the photo) to the railway bridge at the right end of the photo:

 

In essence, this short section allows commercial traffic to sail with a greater load, i.e. ships can have a deeper draft. The gain is substantial: 65cm. What has been gained in this context is more load that can be carried to the industrial harbour which you can see in the right of the photo, called Straubing-Sand. That relieves the roads, especially the nearby motorway, of quite a few lorries.

 

Big question is: will it make any difference for river cruise ships? I doubt it as Straubing has been traditionally the last accessible port sailing downstream. There is no port for them on the following 9kms. The more troubling section is from Straubing-Sand and Bogen downstream to Deggendorf as I understand it.

 

Official waterways' authorities press release in German:

https://www.gdws.wsv.bund.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/DE/20240125_Donauausbau_PM.pdf;jsessionid=EA615AC660ADAB7764AD3288967B3B1A.live21324?__blob=publicationFile&v=2

 

Please do let me know if you talk to captain or crew on your river cruise about this. I would love to know if anything will change for the better or if we need to wait for the other sections' construction work.

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

It is amazing how many lorry loads can be removed from the roads if navigable waterways and barges are used and although our navigable waterways are tiddly compared with Europe it would be the same here if the powers that be would take the plunge 🤪

[Host Jazzbeau]

2 hours ago, Canal archive said:

It is amazing how many lorry loads can be removed from the roads if navigable waterways and barges are used and although our navigable waterways are tiddly compared with Europe it would be the same here if the powers that be would take the plunge 🤪

Whenever I contemplate the NYC water reservoir system – created over 100 years ago and still with enough capacity to serve the expanded population of NYC and Westchester County – I marvel that there was a time when government actually worked!

[notamermaid]

So I guess in New York you cannot blame it on the environmentalists that it does not work. 😉

 

Here there is always a frog or a deer or some nature preservation paperwork in the way of large projects. Not that it is necessarily a bad idea to talk to them but, you know, they want to be involved and always have something to say. Well, on the Danube they all negotiated and after a decade plus it has finally come to fruition.

 

There is a nice demonstration in a pictorial format, for want of a better description, of how may lorries a barge replaces. Will look that up some time.

 

notamermaid

 

[14ersco]

13 hours ago, notamermaid said:

So I guess in New York you cannot blame it on the environmentalists that it does not work. 😉

 

Here there is always a frog or a deer or some nature preservation paperwork in the way of large projects. Not that it is necessarily a bad idea to talk to them but, you know, they want to be involved and always have something to say. Well, on the Danube they all negotiated and after a decade plus it has finally come to fruition.

notamermaid

 

On 1/30/2024 at 2:26 PM, notamermaid said:

Thank you for saying hello. I myself am not familiar with that stretch of the river. It is different from Germany and Austria and weather patterns can be different, too. Of course, extensive flooding in the two countries will lead to at least some extend to flooding downstream, i.e. in Slovakia, Hungary and further. The graph in post #4 is taken from this website: https://www.hydroinfo.hu/en/hidinfo/hidinfo_graf_duna.html

You can look at this and see how the situation progresses throughout the year. And during the coming months I am sure river cruisers will post some info from their cruises beyond Budapest.

Not all river cruisers post on these pages, you will find some others in the roll calls. You could join your respective roll call or a combined roll call thread for the area and/or company.

Have a great cruise.

notamermaid

 

 

notamermaid,

 Thanks for the Danube water levels web site. Will be cruising Budapest to Bucharest this spring and those gauges will be helpful in knowing about potential flooding.

 

In regards to the New York City water system it was actually a large environmental project that has kept their water so pristine.  Back in the 1800's the city started buying vast tracts of land to preserve undeveloped and within those land tracts they built reservoirs and aqueducts that feed into the city.  The land is still undeveloped and the water still does not need filtered. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK566285/

https://dec.ny.gov/nature/waterbodies/lakes-rivers/new-york-city-water-supply

[Canal archive]

It would seem that NY had the foresight to initiate a super sized water system and I expect it’s been looked after. Poor old London Town is suffering with an outdated Victorian system that has been relied on without upgrade or financial input for far too many years. 
Across the world we have relied on superb Victorian engineers but I have a sneaking regard for the Georgian engineers and the forward thinking money men/women who supported them without them where would we be.