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.

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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.

Worth knowing

June 2013 is the river Banff measures against

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.

The Bow is a snow-and-glacier river

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.

Watch the flow and the trend, not the exact metres

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.