A free, independent site that shows how high Sri Lanka’s rivers are right now, whether they’re rising, and what to expect next, using the Department of Irrigation’s own river gauges.
Every level on this site comes from the Department of Irrigation’s river gauges. Gauges report about once an hour, and the site shows the newest reading with the time it was taken.
Official flood warnings are taken from the Disaster Management Centre and shown on the river they mention, with a link to the original bulletin.
These levels are set by the Department of Irrigation for each gauge.
The “next hour” and “next 24 hours” estimates look at how the river has been moving, what the gauges upstream are doing, and the rain falling and forecast over the hills that drain into it.
It’s new and still learning from this season’s data, so it’s marked experimental. Always go by official warnings first.
Every river gauge on this site has a next-hour forecast: where the river is expected to be in about an hour, with a range, refreshed every hour. As far as we know, it is the only public next-hour river forecast for Sri Lanka.
How well has it done? We check every forecast against what the gauge actually read later, and this updates by itself from our prediction log. As of 26 Oct 2026, over the last 30 days: 786 next-hour forecasts at 30 gauges missed by about 0.19 ft on average, against 0.26 ft for guessing “no change”. The real level landed inside the stated range 83% of the time, and rising, falling or steady was called right 58% of the time, against 21% for always saying steady.
Further ahead it is much less sure. Average miss: 3 hours 0.4 ft, 6 hours 0.7 ft, 12 hours 1.1 ft, 24 hours 1.5 ft (the 24-hour range is about 7.0 ft wide). It is a forecast, not an official warning.
The newer gauge-only model (next hour, 3 and 6 hours) has run since 24 Oct. Its own record so far: 297 next-hour checks, missing by about 0.31 ft on average, against 0.47 ft for “no change”.
Sri Lanka Water Levels is an independent project by Shakeeb Sadikeen, a person, not a company or a government body. It collects the Department of Irrigation's river-gauge readings and daily reservoir report, and the Mahaweli Authority's daily report, and shows them in plain language in English, Sinhala and Tamil.
Every figure is shown with the time it was read and links to where it came from. Nothing here is an official warning. The source code is public, so anyone can check how a number is made.
Corrections and questions: x.com/shakeeb_x, report an issue on GitHub.
Automated alerts and daily updates (not official; emergency 117): x.com/waterlevelslk
Data and API for developers and AI toolsResearch behind the flood estimates
Page last reviewed: 24 October 2026
When you answer, we store the answer, what the page showed at that moment, and only if you add them: what you see, a note and a spot rounded to about 1 km. We never store your exact position, your name or your IP address (a scrambled code that changes every day is used for one thing: stopping the same device from answering hundreds of times). Notes are read by the site owner and used only to improve the forecast; they are never shown publicly, and links, phone numbers and e-mail addresses are removed before saving. The only thing shown publicly is a total, such as "9 of 12 people near Hanwella this week said it matched", and only when at least 3 people answered.
For official flood warnings, follow the Disaster Management Centre and the Department of Irrigation. This site is a re-presentation of public data for situational awareness and is not affiliated with either agency.