Rhine water levels 2017 and similar topics

Great to see Le Tour de France start in Germany and a great win by Marcus Kittell on stage 2. It looked like the Rhine received some rain that day. I follow the tour every year and last year spent 9 weeks in Europe following the Tour in the mountain stages near Annecy.

Hi all - We are sailing Amsterdam to Budapest on the 23 July, so this thread has been informative.

Hope to have some warm weather on our trip

Hello hostjazzbeau,

You're not planning to bid? :D

I was considering it. :D As the painting was slightly over my budget I had two choices: 1. go to London and go down in the auction house history as the "mad woman from Germany who tried to buy a Turner with 100 pounds" or 2. find many other people, 185,337 to be precise each with 100 pounds to spare to add to mine to outbid the buyer by 50 pounds. As I could put neither plan into practice the "Ehrenbreitstein went to an unnamed buyer: http://www.sothebys.com/en/auctions/ecatalogue/2017/old-masters-evening-sale-l17033/lot.21.html Oh well, I would probably have not been able to pay for insurance or shipping of the masterpiece.

Update on river levels: Due to the recent rain the level of the Rhine at Kaub has not fallen further but is likely to do so if it stays this hot. The Elbe is faring far worse than the Rhine. It was 29 degrees in Cologne at 12 noon, forecast for later today is 30 in Cologne and 33 in Mannheim.

notamermaid

Hi, everyone! We're a little over a week from our cruise on the Scenic Opal. Should we be concerned with low water levels? Is there measurable rain in the forecast this week, notamermaid?

Santacruzin2,

after a hot weekend we have had thunderstorms and a good amount of rain overnight. The river level is not falling but the rain is not enough to raise the level by more than a couple of inches in the Middle Rhine valley. For a forecast I would consult this website: http://www.accuweather.com/en/de/cologne/50667/weather-forecast/180169 I have put in Cologne which is on your route but feel free to browse other towns. :)

The weather will be cooler this week and unsettled a bit with more rain. The river level is ok.

notamermaid

Santacruzin2,

 

after a hot weekend we have had thunderstorms and a good amount of rain overnight. The river level is not falling but the rain is not enough to raise the level by more than a couple of inches in the Middle Rhine valley. For a forecast I would consult this website: http://www.accuweather.com/en/de/cologne/50667/weather-forecast/180169 I have put in Cologne which is on your route but feel free to browse other towns. :)

 

 

The weather will be cooler this week and unsettled a bit with more rain. The river level is ok.

 

 

notamermaid

We are two weeks out and keeping our fingers crossed.

UNESCO World Heritage sites

During the 41st session of the commitee new sites where added to the list and two extended. Of interest to Rhine river cruisers are the caves in the Swabian Jura (you need an extra day for those as they are South-East of Stuttgart, near Ulm): http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1527

Not sure how accessible they are to the public.

Certainly easier to access - and many have already seen it - is the old town in Strasbourg. Here the UNESCO extended the area: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/495

But not all is good in the list of heritage sites as some are endangered for various reasons. One of them is surprisingly Vienna. But more on that in the thread on the Danube.

Oh, a tip from the anglophile that is me: The Lake District in the Northwest of Great Britain has also been enscribed on the list this year. A great landscape but do not go to the towns in the Lake District during the British Summer holidays...

More importantly: the river level is rising a little due to continued rain.

notamermaid

I have not visited this thread for several months as we cruise the Rhine, Basel to Amsterdam, in September. As this is my first river cruise what I wonder is do water levels tend to rise as we get into September? We are sailing on Amadeus Silver II September 16, 2017.

Hello Bellago,

the basic answer to your question is not really. That is if you compare it to August or July and as a general rule. Let me go into a bit more detail. After spring melt and flooding (sometimes more, sometimes less) the level rises and falls with the rain usually some centimetres, but it can be as much as a metre. The overall scenario is for continued falling levels from May onwards. So for example rise by 10 cm one week, fall 30 the next, rise 10 the next, etc. Till you get to low water levels in autumn which can be severe or not depending on what has happened in the months before. The low tends to be October into early November with (normally) rising levels from November into January the following year (at which point we may have some winter flooding depending on rain and temperature). This year we have started into the season with relatively low water levels...

You can have a look at last year's graphs in this file: http://www.bafg.de/DE/07_Nachrichten/20160907_5_download.pdf?__blob=publicationFile

It is called abb. 3 and the brownish line (highest graph in the grid) is the one you need to look at for reference. It is Maxau on the Rhine. It shows you the river level from March into October. The interrupted lines in the corresponding colours are the reference line for shipping in the navigation channel, by the way. One does not want the graph to reach that line when one wants to cruise on the river! Although Maxau is not representative for cruising on the Rhine one can deduct from it that the really critical spot was at a similar low.

The red graph is also interesting as it represents Magdeburg on the Elbe. You can see how low the Elbe was last year.

Uff! I hope I have not gone into too much detail. Not forgetting the current level: Kaub 135cm, Koblenz 126cm.

As regards the Amadeus Silver II: she looks a fine ship when I see her on the river. I am sure you will have a great time.

notamermaid

So from looking at the posts during June and July where there was concern over ships not being able to navigate, we should recognize that might happen then put it out of our minds for now and plan for a wonderful journey.

Booked on the Rhine, Basel to Amsterdam in late Sept. 2017.

We are hearing that the River is really low.

Should we be concerned??

The river is not exactly really low. I am not sure where you heard this but sometimes Reuters or other websites make it sound worse than it is for river cruise ships as they refer to commodity shipping which is indeed struggling a bit again. Barges all need more water to sail with load for a commercially viable business. That is different from river cruising. As I have mentioned in my previous post it is the case that the river has started into Summer with less water than last year. But that does not mean there will be even lower water levels in September that result in no sailing. It just means a greater likelihood for very low levels in autumn than last year. A statistical value that can be proven wrong if August is very wet.

The prediction right now (as you can see only very little time out): https://www.elwis.de/gewaesserkunde/Wasserstaende/wasserstaendeUebersichtGrafik.html.php?pegelId=1d26e504-7f9e-480a-b52c-5932be6549ab

From the official website of BfG, the federal German water boards, I gathered the information that statistically it has rained less in the last few months than one could have expected in the same time period gathered from the statistics over several years. Hence the fact that the river shows lower figures than last year. The Rhine certainly looks better in their statistics than the Elbe!

For a low water scenario you could have a look at last year's thread on the Rhine, specifically the posts in October.

notamermaid

Notamermaid... reading post on Rhine levels... we are leaving Aug 22 Rhine and Moselle.. is there usually more rain for August? Has the weather been very warn? I appreciate all your informative posts..

Hello amd1234,

good to hear from you again. I am a bit short on time today I am afraid. So here is the accuweather site with Koblenz chosen as town: http://www.accuweather.com/en/de/koblenz/56068/weather-forecast/171042 Not sure how August compares to July. It had been coolish with rain but the heat has returned.

notamermaid

Notamermaid... reading post on Rhine levels... we are leaving Aug 22 Rhine and Moselle.. is there usually more rain for August? Has the weather been very warn? I appreciate all your informative posts..

On Viking Gefjon told switching ship in Nuremberg. Traveling on Main river

On Viking Gefjon told switching ship in Nuremberg. Traveling on Main river

Did a switch end o June from Nuremberg to passau. Likely you are doing the same. Hope yours is as seamless as ours was.

Thanks notamermaid for this post and all your time you contribute. I am eagerly following as we depart Amsterdam on 2nd August on River Empress.

Thanks again, this thread is so valuable.

On Viking Gefjon told switching ship in Nuremberg. Traveling on Main river

Update- We didn't have switch after all! stayed on the Viking Gefjon all the way to Budapest.

I am enjoying and following the river information that you have shared! I am trying to get an idea of the Danube river water levels for mid August when we will travel from Nuremberg to Budapest. There is an Rivercruiseinfo app that states the river is high and in good shape, yet Viking states travel changes on the Danube due to low river conditions. Is there any solid information online on river conditions that you know of?

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There is another thread on Danube level 2017. You might find it helpful.

Thank you! I found it.

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

I have returned from a holiday on my favourite island called Great Britain. Away from computers and similar gadgets I enjoyed fish and chips of differing quality, the seaside but not sand (there are many pebble beaches in England) and the company of family and friends.

The weather was very mixed along the Rhine during my absence, with downpours and flash floods making local news headlines in the area. It has got warmer again and my flat was at a "need to get used to the stuffiness of town again" temperature when I returned. The river level has reacted accordingly and is now low but at a comfortable level for river cruise sailing with Kaub at 173 cm and Koblenz at 167 cm.

Sadly, the situation on the Elbe looks bleak but for the Rhine I am confident we will have a few more weeks of uninterrupted sailings.

notamermaid

Thank you Notamermaid,

We leave September 16 from Basel to Amsterdam on Amadeus Silver II. I have been watching this thread closely. I hope the water level holds till then. I have not yet told my cruise companions of the possibility of disruptions. I just hope if the levels do drop that Amadeus does a good job of alternate plans unlike some of the horror stories I have read on this site.

Notamermaid glad you had a nice vacation. I have been gathering clothes to pack and monitoring the weather on the Rhine and Moselle.. I keep taking out and adding to my pile. I know it's almost two weeks before we leave but I noticed the weather in certain cities(Cologne, Amsterdam) have been rainy and cooler then normal... Is this unusual for August? I was dreading heat and humidity. We live in Boston and the summer has been rainy and very warm..Has the levels on the Rhine been ok? I have capris in my pile maybe just layer up! Thx for your input..