River Gauges and Flood Status

Live water levels from river gauges across every Australian state, joined to the Bureau of Meteorology flood classification for each gauge. One question, one call: which gauges are at or above minor, moderate, or major flood level right now, and where.

Right now

839 gauges reporting, of 947 tracked. Currently at or above a flood classification: 0 major, 0 moderate, 1 minor. See them on the live map (River gauges layer).

Known coverage gap: 35gauges carry a published Bureau of Meteorology flood classification but return no readings to us, so we report no level for them. Australia runs two gauge networks: the state water portals we poll (WaterNSW, Victorian WMIS, Queensland) carry water-resource monitoring, while many flood-warning gauges — including Windsor on the Hawkesbury, Maribyrnong, Lismore and Maitland — publish their real-time heights through the Bureau's flood-warning network, which this service does not yet carry.

Those gauges stay listed and show no reading. They are never shown as being below a flood level, because we do not know that they are. Closing this gap is the next piece of work on the flood layer.

How flood status works

The Bureau of Meteorology publishes minor, moderate, and major flood classification levels for flood-relevant gauges: the water heights at which flooding starts to have defined impacts at that location. We poll each state's own gauge telemetry (WaterNSW, Victorian WMIS, Queensland water monitoring, Water Data SA, Water Data Tasmania, the NT Water Data Portal, and the Bureau's Water Data Online for WA), then derive each gauge's current flood class by comparing its latest reading against those published thresholds.

The result is status reporting against published authority levels: "gauge X is above the BoM major flood level". We do not model, forecast, or predict. Readings are in metres relative to each gauge's local datum. Stale data is flagged and never counted as a current flood signal. See understanding flood classifications.

Endpoints

GET /api/v1/gauges — stations with latest level, flood class, thresholds, and local government area. Filter by state, LGA, bounding box, or floodClass.

GET /api/v1/gauges/summary— counts at or above each class, grouped by state or LGA. One call answers "is anything flooding in my area".

GET /api/v1/gauges/{id} — one gauge with its trailing six hours of readings.

GET /api/v1/gauges/{id}/readings — full reading history with hourly and daily rollups (paid plans; raw readings inside flood events are kept permanently).

All endpoints use your existing API key. Developer guide: river gauges API. Full reference: API docs.

The full flood picture

Gauges are one layer of the flood lifecycle EmergencyAPI covers end to end: official warnings and SES incidents as they happen, rising water against published flood levels, and disaster declarations down to suburb level when recovery starts. The same LGA vocabulary joins all of it.

This service reports published gauge observations against the Bureau of Meteorology flood classifications for each gauge. It is status reporting, not flood prediction, and not a substitute for official warnings from your state emergency service. Readings are in metres relative to each gauge’s local datum, not sea level, and gauges can fail or report erroneous values during extreme events.