Sea level and flood warning

How high the sea is at Pärnu right now, against the Weather Service's own warning levels for this town — and what the January 2005 flood actually reached.

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The sea against the Estonian Weather Service’s warning levels

53 cm

Sea level now

-50 cm

Low-water warning level

The published low-water warning. The bay drains out rather than fills up, and the sea walks away from the shore.

180 cm

First warning level

The critical level for Pärnu. At this height water comes up onto streets in the low parts of town.

230 cm

Second warning level

Half a metre above the critical level — the Weather Service's next warning step.

280 cm

Third warning level

A metre above the critical level. The Weather Service's own wording for this step is extensive flooding.

The reading is live from the Estonian Weather Service’s gauge. The warning levels are the Estonian Weather Service’s own published criteria for this town, which it publishes once rather than in the feed — the source and the date we checked it are below.

Sea temperature at the same gauge: 10,6 °C

What a high sea means here

High water here is a winter event, not a summer one. The big surges come with January cyclones, when the beach season is shut and nobody is watching the sea. Pärnu Bay is one of the three most surge-exposed bays in Estonia and the town is the largest place on any of them: the water arrives across flat ground, so a rise of a few tens of centimetres above the critical level covers a lot of streets rather than a few. What the Rescue Board asks people in flood-prone streets to do, before the water rises rather than during it: find out at what level your own address is at risk, move the car to higher ground or a public car park, keep food, water and a charged phone, and keep a battery or car radio for Vikerraadio if power and mobile go. Do not walk or drive through flooded streets.

The flooding story

Cyclone Gudrun, 9 January 2005 — the benchmark

The storm surge in Pärnu Bay reached about 275 cm and the flood maximum in the city about 272 cm on the night of 9 January, the highest since systematic observation began in 1923. The previous record, about 253 cm, had stood since 1967. The shoreline moved as much as a kilometre inland across densely built streets, one elderly resident died, and national losses came to roughly 0,7% of Estonia's GDP.

Source: Suursaar et al., Boreal Environment Research 11: 143 — cyclone Gudrun and its hydrodynamic consequences, checked 1 August 2026 (2 months ago).

Those 2005 numbers are on the old scale

Estonia moved its heights to the EH2000 (Amsterdam) datum in 2018. Nothing changed in the water; the printed numbers got bigger. At Pärnu the difference was reported at about 19 cm, and the Weather Service's own critical level for the town moved from 160 cm on the old Kronstadt datum to 180 cm on the new one. So Gudrun's 275 cm belongs on the old scale — roughly 295 cm in the numbers this page shows. Read it as the size of the event, not as a figure to compare centimetre for centimetre with the reading above.

Source: Riigi Ilmateenistus — merevee tasemed uues kõrgussüsteemis (2018), checked 1 August 2026 (2 months ago).

The protection Pärnu has had is running out

The Estonian coast has been rising out of the sea since the ice left, and that land uplift is what has kept a flat town on a shallow bay habitable. Projections put relative sea level 20–40 cm, or on higher scenarios 40–60 cm, above today's by 2100 — uplift overtaken within the century. A flood that happened once in living memory is not a fixed risk here; it is a rising one.

Source: Sea-level change and flood risks in the Estonian coastal zone (Springer), checked 1 August 2026 (2 months ago).

The official warnings

This page is a reading, not an alert service. The official sea-flood warning and any local action notice are here:

Riigi Ilmateenistus — hoiatused (official weather and sea warnings) — The warning itself, in Estonian, English and Russian. This page is a reading; that page is the alert.

Kriis.ee — the national crisis information site — What to do before, during and after a flood, from the Rescue Board.

Riigi Ilmateenistus — sea level along the whole coast — Every coastal station, including the graph for Pärnu and the neighbouring bays.

Emergency number 112 — For anything happening now. The state helpline for questions is 1247.

How to read this

This is the sea height the Estonian Weather Service measures at the Pärnu coastal station. It is one gauge, not a street-by-street map of which lanes have water — the sea comes up unevenly, and wind and waves pile it higher against a shore than a calm number suggests.

It is not the official warning. When the sea is high, follow the official channel above and your local civil-protection instructions. This page never tells you a street is safe.