Bačka Palanka

Bačka Palanka sits on the left bank of the Danube in Vojvodina, in northern Serbia, and the river passes it at kilometre 1298.6. The Danube water level at Bačka Palanka is read against a gauge whose zero stands at 73.97 metres, so the figure on the board is a height above a fixed mark rather than above the sea. On 24 October 2026 the board showed minus 70 centimetres, which puts the surface at 73.27 metres. A negative reading means the river has slipped under the mark, not that the bed has run dry. The normal for the day is 127 centimetres, and the water was 197 centimetres below it.

The 825-Metre Bridge to Ilok

The road bridge crosses at kilometre 1297, barely a few hundred metres from the gauge. Opened in 1974 under the name 25 Mai, it carries a single carriageway; bombs hit it on 4 April 1999, and lorries only came back on 30 April 2002. The crossing runs straight into the Ilok gauge, on the Croatian side, where the D2 road comes down from Fruška gora. The town itself has 25,476 inhabitants (2022), and in August 2022 its Danube port was given a harbour master's office — the first the ministry had opened in 18 years.

Two Sets of Marks, One Reading

RHMZ works with two defence levels: 530 centimetres for the state of readiness and 650 for the exceptional one. Navigation uses other numbers, published by Plovput: 47 centimetres at low water and 578 at high water. In October 2026 the river was far below all four. The RHMZ series reaches its maximum of 738 centimetres on 11 April 2006 and its minimum of minus 75 on 22 October 2026; for 25 October the forecast gave minus 73, inside a seven-day band that runs from minus 110 to minus 50.

The Dry Summer and the Tikvara

The drought of 2026 left the river well under its low-water mark. On 29 July the gauge read minus 57 centimetres and RHMZ expected another ten centimetres of fall, while Lake Tikvara, joined to the Danube by two channels, could almost be crossed on foot. By the end of October the level had dropped again, to minus 75. Upstream stands Vukovar's gauge; downstream, Novi Sad, 43 kilometres receives the same water.