Achleiten

Achleiten is the first gauge the Danube meets on Austrian soil, at kilometre 2223, barely three kilometres below Passau. The Austrian stretch of the navigation atlas begins at this point and runs down to Wolfsthal at kilometre 1872. The river measured here is no longer the German one: at Passau the Inn river arrives and roughly doubles the flow, so every Alpine flood wave registers at once. Readings for the Danube water level at Achleiten come from DoRIS every six hours; at 20:15 UTC on 25 October 2026 the gauge showed 240 cm.

Datum and three marks

The gauge zero sits at 288.04 metres (PNP). Three marks are published: RNW at 258 cm for low water, HDC at 485 cm for the platform, and HSW at 510 cm as the official high-water mark. Since 1976, 1,039 days have stayed below RNW, 215 rose above HDC and 124 passed even HSW.

From 976 to 236 centimetres

The series opens on 1 January 1976 and holds 17,537 station-days with a mean of 315 cm. A first warning came in August 2002, when the river reached 791 cm; on 3 June 2013 the Danube then hit 976 cm, the highest value on record, when the flood submerged Passau and the border country. October 2026 reversed the picture: on the 25th the gauge fell to 236 cm, the lowest of the whole series, with the day's percentile at 0. Shipping responds with load limits, and the October average of 272 cm is now far above the river.

Neighbouring gauges

Three kilometres upstream, Passau shows what comes out of Germany and the Inn. Seventy-nine kilometres down, Wilhering downstream measures a calmer river on its way to Linz.