Szeged

Szeged is the largest Hungarian city on the Tisza and the last major town before the Serbian border. Its gauge stands at kilometre 173.6 of the Tisza, counted upstream from the Danube, and the platform has followed the series since 2002. On the morning of 27 October 2026 the Tisza river level at Szeged stood at 82 cm, 16 below the day's normal of 98, in the low-water band.

What the Szeged gauge shows

The station has no official flood marks: neither LDC nor HDC is published here. From 25 years of readings the platform derives two statistical markers: 91 cm for low water, the 10th percentile, and 450 cm for high water, the 90th. They are not defence levels but comparison lines — below 91 cm the river sits in the lowest tenth of the day, above 450 in the highest. Today's level is below both, and the percentile over the 30-year window is 18.8: about 81% of the readings for the date were higher.

The 2006 record and the 2026 drought

The series maximum is 1,009 cm, on 21 April 2006, 48 above the 1970 flood, when the Tisza rose to 961 cm. The low comes from 2026: 42 cm on 24 September, after a dry summer. October brought a slow recovery, from 57 cm on 28 September to 82 cm on 27 October. The forecast issued that day holds the level at 83 cm for five days, with a band widening from 78–88 to 63–103 cm.

The Tisza, the Mures and the Danube

At Szeged the Tisza takes in the Mures, which comes down from Arad, upstream on the Mures. From here the Tisza runs south along 532 navigable kilometres; the stretch to the Novi Becej dam is class Va, for vessels up to 110 metres, 2.8 metres draught and 3,000 tonnes. The river reaches the Danube at Titel, and 39 km upstream the Danube at Novi Sad shows the level before the two waters mix.