notamermaid

Oh yes. There is still only one chamber at Iffezheim lock and there are not as many suitable docking locations for river cruise ships in the Upper Rhine valley as in the Middle Rhine valley, in density I mean. I can imagine that there is a real traffic jam that will take some time to clear. 750cm is still in the modelling, now around 11pm on Monday. This will keep changing a bit as regards time but although the graph is now a bit lower than yesterday, a short river traffic ban looks almost inevitable. It is raining in the Vosges Mountains, around Basel, in the Upper Rhine valley and in the Neckar valley. This band of rain has also already extended into Bavaria, so more water for the Danube basin. notamermaid

Very slow receding waters still. Pfelling gauge still over one metre above highest permitted level for river traffic. All in all the situation has eased since yesterday though. Now only Hofkirchen and Vilshofen on flood level 4. notamermaid

I am assuming this is the case. Brief look: Maxau gauge is at 725cm. 750cm is in the modelling for 1am to 3am on Tuesday. Note that the wave coming Monday and Tuesday will be nowhere near as high as the one before and is unlikely to have a major affect on the gauges downstream from Mannheim (and not Mannheim either). notamermaid

Played cricket once in a summer camp (on holiday in England), enjoyed it, did not get the rules. A fun day. We have football coming up in a week's time. European Cup in Germany! My supermarket is full of beer and German flags. 😁 notamermaid

We have the Moselle in fine form, the Neckar back, the Saar mostly back (from May flooding), the Main back and the Middle Rhine and Lower Rhine back for river cruising. The Upper Rhine valley is also back for now. What does that mean? The level has fallen at Maxau gauge to now 732cm, so also okay. The High Rhine is high and Lake Constance still on flooding status. This is a little problematic for Basel but I have no details on the situation there, just that it is still on flood vigilance. Although we have good weather and no rain, there is too much water for the Karlsruhe area to cope with. The level at Maxau is forecast to rise again and if the computer modelling is correct the river will be on 750cm again early on Tuesday. Before that we have the European elections and various local elections on Sunday, you will have seen the election campaign banners and posters in towns and villages. Emotions a bit higher than they are in other weeks but so far incidents have been few albeit a couple of them tragic. Hopefully we can then start the celebrations and cheering of the European Football Cup in peace and quiet with the Rhine fully back on 14 June. notamermaid

CC UK has this news feature: https://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/news/rhine-and-danube-river-cruises-impacted-high-water-levels?stay=1&posfrom=1 notamermaid

The situation is not good in Passau but has improved significantly at the embankment at least. In the webcam you can see the difference to yesterday (go to Archiv in the menu): https://www.feratel.com/webcams/deutschland/passau.html Still on flood level 4 but likely to go to level 3 during the night. notamermaid

That is quite the long coach ride. Good that they can still offer Strasbourg although with another long-ish coach ride. And you get to see the Rhine Gorge. You know, them cutting out Strasbourg and Maxau/Karlsruhe sailing could prove to be wise on top of easier logistics. Sailing is at reduced speed and Maxau gauge is not looking too good, which I will come to shortly. Have a good trip. notamermaid

The Emerald Dawn is sailing, has covered some ground today but not enough. After a stop at Gernsheim she continued upriver and is approaching Worms. The Treasures is now on the Main sailing through Frankfurt. The Main is also now back to mean levels, from the graphs I interpret that there was no river traffic ban, but that did not guarantee unimpeded sailing, you know - the low bridges. We need to look at that graph at Maxau gauge soon, I am afraid. notamermaid

I would say that this is a good question. In theory yes, for August that is. The higher ground water table will help certainly. And the situation is a drawn out flood rather than a spike. However, August is still eight weeks away so a lot can happen. There is another factor, unknown to me in quantity and impact, which plays into what may happen in August. The hydrologists have devised a system that takes water out of the Danube system and diverts it to the Main system. The Main Danube Canal has been designed to feed the Main waterway in summer, so take it from the Danube. How much the authorities will make use of that I do not know. We can compare 2024 to 2013 and see what did the river did after that flooding. Now, in 2013 the level was even higher and I do not remember what the weather was like after June of that year but let us have a look. The authorities allow us to really delve deep into the archives of the hydrology service. I have compiled a graph of May to September of 2013 at Pfelling as that gauge we need to focus on in low water: In 2013 the river peaked at 898cm on the 5th of June, this year it peaked at 834cm on the 5th of June [does any one, like me, find this eerie?]. Now comes the crucial bit. You can see the graph going down and by mid July the river seems be going in and out of a relatively low level, meaning well below the mean (MW line). Indeed the river gets low, low enough to potentially cause problems for river cruise ships. The 16th to the 19th of August saw the river at 290cm or just below that. Very short of course, but it shows that the river can drop that far in that time frame from really bad flooding. The question now for this year is: how long will the river take to fall to the mean, will it be a longer process than in 2013? And then we will have to rely on the weather... notamermaid

Time to have a look at what happened at the Neckar. The sharp rise at Plochingen posted above looks like this in the context of the past 31 days: This high volume of water of course contributed to the flooding on the Rhine. Most of the water is now through, with Heidelberg river traffic also back. The river at Mannheim is still relatively high but this will pass soon, too. notamermaid

Okay, will leave out the but. 😁 But hide behind a shield so no one can shoot the messenger. I have just popped over from the Danube thread where things are not going too well, I mean on the river. We here are having better weather and the levels of the river are doing okay for now, I am not very familiar with the Netherlands but it still looks all good up there with the Dutch authorities reporting no more than elevated levels at Lobith. That is the first gauge of the Rhine in the Netherlands. And no high volumes of water seem to be troubling the Netherlands elsewhere. So, to approach the topic slowly. I am still not too happy with what the computer is calculating at Maxau gauge and Lake Constance is still registered as being on flooding level, not rising but staying on this high. notamermaid

What the bleep? Have they just closed the river again in parts of Austria? It looks like a short stretch including the two locks: Unfortunately, it is also raining again, from my geography skills if they are correct I would say mostly in the Inn river basin. notamermaid

Over on the Rhine we are doing the serious cleaning but I admit it is potentially a bit early for that. While the Middle and Lower Rhine valley sections are okay, just slower than normal traffic, the Upper Rhine is continuing to give us, the experts and also me, a bit cause for concern. We will see how the computer keeps calculating during the afternoon and check later in the evening. notamermaid

That Gülle waggon can be quite the aromatic experience when driving in front of you on the country road and you cannot overtake. Right now the clearing-up is taking in place in towns and villages, basically following the water down your street with the high pressure water hose - that unwanted brown sludge needs to got rid of before it becomes mud and dries. It will be a slow process on the German Danube as the river is still very high. Let us have a look. It is better but will take several more days to get to a kind of normal: No chance of getting river traffic going in Germany today and it does not look that promising for tomorrow yet either. The map for Bavaria's gauges: Apart from the mud and debris, disease can become a problem. In several districts people are advised to boil their water before use. As a side note: agriculture has been affected a bit as well with harvests impacted. White asparagus with its end of June harvest time limit is a problem and is likely to increase in price. Budapest is on the flood warning 1 and the "Lower Quay" is probably being flooded this afternoon. That is the road close to the embankment but I am not sure if that is exactly where the river cruise ships normally dock. Further downstream I see ships moving at Novi Sad and Giurgiu (for Bucharest). The crest of the wave has not got there yet, it is in Slovakia and Hungary, with the levels rising further downstream. They have gone to flood level 1 or may do so in the next day or two. notamermaid

Thank you for the government website, had forgotten about that one. In Austria they handle the HSW, the highest permitted level for river traffic not as strict as in Germany, so while a gauge can show a level above that line the authorities may close the river at a higher level or open it at a higher level. So the fairway info above is a great resource. I reckon they update as soon as new info becomes available from the hydrologists (department). We can see that right now the border section with Germany is still closed, that is the DE-AT entry at the top. Passau where the three rivers meet is between 2225 and 2226. At 2201 is where the joint Danube ends, i.e. the river is solely in Austria. Likewise, the Danube shared with Slovakia still has a ban. notamermaid

I have read of ship swaps being done just to get ships back where they are supposed to be, so with those ships not being the same layout I guess they will really have to swap. Hope your Rhine and Moselle journey works out as planned. With four weeks to go, it should. Officially the flood warnings for the Middle and Lower Rhine have been lifted and Maxau gauge is at 740cm. Good, with a huge big BUT. You have seen the Rhine Falls, and all that water together with the Aare river needs to get through the Upper Rhine valley. So the weekend now looks alright, but... I will let it play, i.e. let the computer modelling update during the day and then will check again. notamermaid

The level is still above the permitted level in the graph, i.e. on paper at Linz. I cannot find out what is happening right now in detail, I can only see the Viking Tor moving towards Linz, no barges or other ship. Further downstream more ships are moving so a section of the river must have had the ban lifted. A partial lifting of the ban is also what a German language online newspaper is saying. notamermaid

News from Budapest, river bank closure: https://welovebudapest.com/en/article/2024/06/06/budapest-danube-flood-2024-embankments-to-be-closed/ notamermaid

So, while the Rhine is getting better and better (for now), the Danube is still really struggling. It is a drawn out flooding situation as you have seen on the gauge station map. I will show this for Passau gauge with the two day trend put in: Yesterday I read the official information for skippers notification from the service called "NfB". Yesterday's notification sheet says all gauging stations of the German Federal waterway are above the permitted figure for river traffic (HSW): https://www.elwis.de/DE/dynamisch/Nfb/NfbDetailview:elwis_nfb_search:2024/1358 Additionally at the bottom it says there that it is uncertain when this will likely change, i.e. a change is not going to occur in the next few days. Today's wording is much the same: https://www.elwis.de/DE/dynamisch/Nfb/NfbDetailview:elwis_nfb_search:2024/1371 I would love to say "at least it is not raining" but I cannot. There is rain over Bavaria tonight. notamermaid

Welcome to Cruisecritic. We can assume that the situation has improved by then but right now we just cannot say how long it will take to see a major improvement. Did not know about Pittsburgh. Wow. notamermaid

Shall we end the day on good news? I think it is good news, I am not an official but may we at Maxau, you know... Gauge says 749cm and I see ships signalling three to five minutes ago and moving towards Karlsruhe/Maxau: Oh, and the wave has arrived at the German border with the Netherlands where it has lost its severity for sure as I mentioned earlier this morning. notamermaid

With the Danube and the Rhine so high, we may wonder how things developed on the Elbe. It is really curious to note that despite the weather coming from the East/Northeast and the rain drifting into the South and Southwest of Germany the rain did not hit the Elbe in a major way. It appears that the clouds decided to start emptying their load when hitting the Bavarian Forest and then really chucking it down in Germany in a spiral action, meaning the radar showed the rain clouds circulation mainly over the Danube basin and on its periphery, giving rain to the Black Forest, Swabian Alb and Lake Constance. This was the scenario at the end of May. Via the Vltava and its tributaries coming from the German border the Elbe did get quite a volume of water eventually but saw no official flooding, just a high manageable level. So to Dresden, first couple of days of May missing (sorry!): Going forward, things look okay in the Czech Republic it seems and the Elbe to remain on a good level, at least going into next week. notamermaid

As of yesterday, sections of the Saar were still closed to river traffic. The sonar ship "Mosel" is still checking the river bed for shallow areas. The authorities have set the depth of the navigation channel at 3 metres. Some spots still have too much sand and gravel and the depth is not guaranteed yet so they keep working. A short video in German: https://www.sr.de/sr/home/nachrichten/panorama/saarschifffahrt_nach_hochwasser_in_teilabschnitten_wieder_frei_100.html The Moselle river is fine as regards level and so thankfully does not contribute to the flooding on the Rhine. notamermaid

We have read that the Viking Kara will remain in Koblenz to receive her new passengers from Strasbourg. And the Emerald Dawn? She is in Mainz, still over 300 kilometres away from Basel. With her in Mainz is the Treasures, now it appears slightly delayed on her way to Budapest. Still, I will follow her path through the wave on the Main and her arrival on the Danube in time hopefully for better conditions over there by then. notamermaid