The Rajang, Gauge by Gauge

Where the river is right now at every gauge from Kapit down to Sibu, each against the alert levels the department publishes for it.

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Town Tools builds free, public tools for Sibu 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.

Upstream, in the order the water travels

Kapit

10.4 m

Below the alert level · 1.5 m under the alert level

The Rajang at Kapit, far above the tidal reach. Nothing the sea does moves this gauge, so what it shows is rain and only rain — which makes it the cleanest early read on the river Sibu has. The water passing Kapit today is days from here.

Song

6.4 m

Below the alert level · 4.2 m under the alert level

Between Kapit and Kanowit, and still above the tide. If Kapit and Song are both climbing, the rise is real and it is coming.

KanowitTidal

1.7 m

Below the alert level · 2.8 m under the alert level

Pasar Kanowit is on DID Sarawak's own flood record at 0.50 m in the same events that put water into Sibu — the same flood, arriving earlier.

DurinTidal

2.3 m

Below the alert level · 1.2 m under the alert level

At the Durin crossing on the road between Sibu and Kanowit — the last gauge before the town.

Here in town

Express Terminal, town centreTidal

1.8 m

Below the alert level · 0.7 m under the alert level

The Rajang beside the express boat terminal. This is the gauge the town's flood-level page reads, and the one whose four rungs are worth knowing: Alert 2.50 m, Warning 2.62 m, Danger 2.90 m.

Sarawak MaritimeTidal

1.2 m

Below the alert level · 1.6 m under the alert level

A few hundred metres down from the Express Terminal, on a lower datum — it reads below zero at low water, which is ordinary here and not a fault.

Sungai SalimTidal

2.5 m

Below the alert level · 0.1 m under the alert level

Salim is one of the areas DID's flood record names most often, and it sits outside the flood control scheme that protects the town centre.

StabauTidal

2.7 m

Below the alert level · 0.8 m under the alert level

Jalan Utama Salim Stabau is on DID's own record at 0.60 m — the deepest of the Sibu entries.

What has happened here before

Two things have to happen at once

DID Sarawak's flood record for Sibu keeps giving the same cause in the same words: continuous rain meeting a high tide. Either one alone the town absorbs. The upriver gauges above tell you about the first half; the tide is the other half, and DID publishes the Sarawak king tide dates a year ahead.

Why the gauges in town tell you less than they look like they do

Every gauge from Kanowit down is inside the tidal reach. The Rajang at the Express Terminal ran from about −0.4 m before dawn to +1.7 m mid-morning and back down again on an ordinary day in August, with no rain anywhere — more than two metres of movement, twice a day, that means nothing at all. That is why this page never says "rising": at these gauges the direction is mostly the moon. What matters is how high the peak gets, and whether the low water between tides stops going back down.

The levels are the department's, not ours

Alert, Warning and Danger are different at every gauge — 2.50 m at the Express Terminal, 4.59 m at Kanowit, 11.90 m at Kapit — because a river that floods at three metres in one place floods at twelve in another. Those numbers are read live from DID's own table beside each reading, so when the department revises one, this page follows it the same day. Nothing here is transcribed by hand.

The flood control scheme stops at the town centre

Sibu's MP has said publicly that the existing scheme covers the town centre and not the outskirts — the west bank and the Salim areas in particular. Those are also the places DID's own flood records name most often, which is the honest reason for a page like this: if the plan does not cover your street, the gauge nearest you is worth watching yourself.

Official pages

DID Sarawak — iHydro, every gauge in the stateThe department's own live table, and the source of every number on this page. It also carries a 24-hour history per gauge, hour by hour.

DID Sarawak — recorded flood eventsThe register the street names and depths above come from, archived back to 1946.

Sarawak gauges on the national flood portalThe federal view of the same telemetry. It has been publishing zeros for most of Sarawak; if it disagrees with the state portal, the state portal is the one that owns these gauges.