Drobeta Turnu Severin

At Drobeta-Turnu Severin the Danube is not a free river. The town, seat of Mehedinți County, stands at kilometre 931, where the river leaves the gorge; the Danube water level at Drobeta-Turnu Severin is measured in a retention pool. The gauge zero is 34.13 metres above the Black Sea. On 25 October 2026 it read 660 centimetres, ten above the previous day. No low- or high-water marks are published here.

The Gauge Between the Two Dams

The dam at kilometre 863 turned the reach between Prahovo and the town into a retention pool at least 3.5 metres deep. The boatmasters' guide of the Danube Commission gives the station, number 37 at km 931.00, two marks calculated up to 1996: 583 centimetres, the minimum retention level, and 877, the maximum. Almost three metres separate them, at 39.96 and 42.90 metres above sea level; the 24 October reading sits 67 centimetres above the minimum and 227 below the maximum. The 2011–2026 mean is 733. AFDJ's table of characteristic levels, 1991–2020, starts at Calafat.

Twenty-three kilometres upstream, the Danube water level at Orșova reads 2,525 centimetres, or 69.61 metres above sea level, almost 29 metres higher because Iron Gate I lies between them at kilometre 943.

The Dam at Kilometre 863

Iron Gate II entered service at kilometre 863 in 1986, with locks 310 by 34 metres and a maximum fall of 11.70 metres. The level rose four to five metres afterwards, and today only the first and last piers of Trajan's bridge are visible on the banks. The bridge, built in 103–105 by Apollodorus of Damascus, ran 1,135 metres; in 1982 twelve of its twenty piers remained, after the International Danube Commission decided in 1906 to demolish two.

Seventy-two kilometres below the town, Danube water level at Prahovo stood at -156 centimetres the day before, and at 140 kilometres the Danube river level at Vidin was -58.

Records and Low Water

The 2011–2026 series holds 5,729 station-days and peaks at 889 centimetres on 16 June 2013, twelve above the old retention maximum; in 2014 it reached 876 on 16 May. Low water fell to 610 on 23 February 2017 and to 620 between 12 and 18 October 2026. Apart from one bad reading of -153 centimetres on 31 August 2026, when the eDelta source shows 675, the Danube level at Drobeta-Turnu Severin has not dropped below 583 centimetres on a single day since 2011. In the 1971–2019 discharge series the maximum is April 2006, 15,800 cubic metres a second; the minimum 1,060, in October 1985.

The Town and the Port

The city has 79,865 inhabitants at the 2021 census. The port runs from kilometre 927 to 934, with a passenger terminal at 929–931 and a 3,000-metre winter basin for 170 vessels.