Loading The Bow River at Banff…
How high the Bow River is running through Banff right now — live flow and level from the Water Survey of Canada gauge, with the official Alberta flood-warning link.
Loading the latest information…
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Banff and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.
It describes the river; it is not a flood warning.
52.7 m³/s
Low for the river’s recent range. Rising over the past few days. Measured Aug 23, 6:25 p.m..
The official flood warning is at Alberta Rivers (Alberta Environment and Protected Areas)
These numbers describe the river. They are not a flood warning — the official flood-vigilance level for this station is set by Alberta Rivers (Alberta Environment and Protected Areas).
Alberta's official river service issues the flood watches, flood warnings, high-streamflow advisories and ice-jam advisories for the Bow Basin. This page shows how the river is running; the warnings live there.
Open the Alberta Rivers (Alberta Environment and Protected Areas) page
On 21 June 2013 the Bow peaked at about 466 m³/s at Banff — several times a normal summer flow — during the flood that tore through the Bow Valley and Calgary. Every high-water June since is read against that year.
It rises through late spring and summer as mountain snowmelt and glacier melt feed it, usually running highest in June, and drops to a low, clear flow under ice in winter. A warm, wet spell on a deep snowpack is what pushes it up fast.
The gauge's level is measured against a local reference point, not height above sea level, so the metres themselves are not a depth. What tells you something is the flow in cubic metres per second and whether the river is rising or falling — both shown above.
Checked Aug 23, 7:47 p.m.. River data from the Water Survey of Canada (Environment and Climate Change Canada), under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Real-time readings are provisional and unvalidated, and may later be revised.
Bow River: 52.7 m³/s
low for recent days · rising