Wilhering

The Cistercian abbey of Wilhering, founded in 1146, holds the most important rococo church in Austria, built between 1733 and 1751, and looks at the Danube from the right bank. The Danube water level at Wilhering is measured at kilometre 2144.05, below the Ottensheim-Wilhering dam of 1970–1974. Every reading is referred to a zero fixed at 249.12 metres above the Adriatic. Low water stands at 214 centimetres, high water at 584; the 2020 mean is 322, a hundred-year flood would reach 1,157, and ships may pass until 674, ninety above the highest navigable stage.

The Abbey and the Dam

The monastery gives the place both its name and its silhouette, and the town around it counts 6,235 inhabitants. The run-of-river plant at Ottensheim-Wilhering was built between 1970 and 1974, and the gauge stands below it.

2013 Above 2002

In the daily series the highest value is 1,119 centimetres, on 4 June 2013, eighty-two above the 2002 peak of 1,037. The gauge stayed above the high-water mark for twelve days that June, and thirteen days in 2002. The wave of 2013 was fed by Alpine rain, and the Inn, which gathers the Salzach, enters the Danube at Passau some eighty kilometres upstream — part of the water that lifted the gauge past its 2002 mark came from there.

The Lowest Position in Thirty Years

The year that matters now is 2026. The minimum fell to 221 centimetres, only seven above low water; in 2018 it had been 234 and in 2022 249. The driest reading remains 164, from 22 January 1979. At 22:15 on 25 October 2026 the gauge stood at 237, fifty-three below the normal of the last thirty years. The daily series starts in 1976 and holds 17,537 station-days, with a mean of 349 cm; the highest daily value is 1,119 cm, on 4 June 2013. Since 1976 the gauge has spent 154 days below the mark, but the last three decades show none. Eighty-three kilometres upstream, the gauge at Passau shows what leaves Bavaria; thirty-four kilometres down, the Mauthausen river gauge marks the entry to the Linz area.