NAfter months without sufficient rainfall, the level of the Rhine in Emmerich, just before the Dutch border, has reached an all-time low of zero centimetres. The value 0.0 was determined on Tuesday morning, said an employee of the waterways and shipping administration in Emmerich of the German Press Agency. That is a drop of four centimeters from Monday morning’s measurement. As early as Monday afternoon, only two centimeters had been measured.
According to the information, the previous low was on October 30, 2018 with a daily average of seven centimeters. At that time, four centimeters were measured as the daily low. Even if the actual level meter dries up due to low water, even minus values can be recorded with a second data collector in Emmerich.
The water levels are not to be confused with the lowest point in the river. The fairways for commercial shipping are significantly deeper than the water level according to the gauge. This only shows the difference between the water surface and the so-called zero level, which is not at the deepest point of the river bed. On Monday, the fairway near Emmerich was still almost two meters deep.
Previous negative records, mostly from the extreme low water in October 2018, are also shaky upstream: In Duisburg, the previous low of 153 centimeters could already be undercut on Tuesday morning, the authority announced on Monday. At the Cologne level, the previous low of 69 centimeters may be set on Thursday evening.
“As long as it doesn’t rain, it’s going downhill,” a spokesman for the authority told dpa on Sunday. According to the DWD, it should hardly rain on Tuesday. The meteorologists only expect showery rain on Wednesday and Thursday night, and longer-lasting rain during the day on Thursday.
