Europe / Germany · Environment

Rhine River hits record low water level in drought

Rank
Ran: 42h
Updated: 6d ago
Closed
Outlets: 7
Regions: 2
Countries: 4
Languages: 4

NOS Netherlands · Dutch 27 Sept, 10:27 UTC

The first outlet on the story

Read it also in Deutsch (3) · +2 languages

Read at NOS

How it spread

Outlets, by hours since the first article

First outlet: NOS, 27 Sept, 10:27 UTC.
Second country: Germany, with Tagesschau.
Fastest hour: +2 outlets from 28 Sept, 06:22 UTC.
Second region: Middle East, with Oman Daily.
Last article: 7 outlets.

Where it travelled

The 4 countries whose press covered it, the later a country joined, the more it stands out. Open the live map

The regions

86%14%

Europe 6 outlets · 3 countries · 86%
Middle East 1 outlet · 1 country · 14%

First movers

NOS 27 Sept, 10:27 UTC
NU.nl +3h 48m
Tagesschau +19h 55m
Die Zeit +20h 42m
Der Spiegel +23h 11m

Last to join

Oman Daily 28 Sept, 15:02 UTC
Lrytas 28 Sept, 12:26 UTC
Der Spiegel 28 Sept, 09:39 UTC
Die Zeit 28 Sept, 07:09 UTC
Tagesschau 28 Sept, 06:22 UTC

The figures

Coverage: 7 outlets in 4 countries, across 2 regions. The article links last a week past the story’s last article; the outlet list is permanent. Of the 7 outlets, 1 state-owned, 2 public-service, 4 private. A count of countries is not a count of independent press systems.
Countries by region: Europe 3: Germany, Lithuania, Netherlands. Middle East 1: Oman. The region a country’s press publishes from, as the feed list files it; the outlets that publish from no single country count as one country under International.
Languages: Arabic, German, Lithuanian, Dutch.
Timeline: Earliest article NOS, 27 Sept 2026, 10:27 UTC. First seen 27 Sept 2026, 10:40 UTC. Last seen 29 Sept 2026, 04:54 UTC. The earliest article is the earliest claimed publication time among the outlets Loudest reads, a claim rather than an observation and not a record of who broke the story (the data files call it the lead article); first seen is when Loudest first fetched an article of it, from which the running time counts.
Classification: Region Europe, Germany. Topic Environment. Hard news Judged hard news. On the map. Whether the story is hard news under the rule in the methodology, judged from its headlines by a model; a story judged outside the rule is left off the map and kept here. The region and country are where the story is about, not where it was covered.
Score: None now: last seen more than 48 hours ago, so off the ranking. One vote per general-press country and a smaller term for outlets, each counted from the moment it joined the story and fading on its own clock, so a late article does not renew the rest. A day in the archive keeps the score it was ranked by that day.
Chain: Continued by Niedrigwasser: Rhein-Pegel vielerorts unter null gefallen; Rhine River Water Levels Drop to Historic Lows. A story continues another when it resembled it as it began, past that story’s own 48-hour box.
Day by day: Outlets and countries are the story’s whole life as of that midnight; the 24-hour columns are that day’s own coverage; the last column is the methodology version the day was measured under, and a day that spans a change of version shows the first and last, linked to the changelog that lists every version between. A day marked partial is one Loudest read only in part: fewer than 130 of its 144 ten-minute runs, or more than 30 minutes missed at its start or end.

Day Rank Score Outlets Countries 24h outlets 24h countries Method

28 Sept 2026 360 2.97 7 4 5 3 3.3

This record as JSON, CC BY 4.0.

How this was measured

This page describes measured coverage: which of the outlets Loudest reads carried the story, from how many countries and in how many languages, and when. It says nothing about whether the story is true, important or well reported.

Started 27 Sept, 10:40 UTC · Updated 29 Sept, 04:54 UTC · Final figures at midnight UTC

Covered by 7 outlets

Pin outlets you trust with ☆ and they come first in every story.

Europe 6 outlets

Der Spiegel Germany 29 Sept, 04:54 UTC
Niedrigwasser am Rhein: Düsseldorfer Rheinfähre meldet Kurzarbeit an
+1 more articleHide 1 more article
- Rheinpegel bei Köln erreicht historischen Tiefstand 28 Sept, 09:39 UTC
Lrytas Lithuania 28 Sept, 12:26 UTC
Reino vandens lygis Kelne nukrito iki rekordiškai žemos ribos
Die Zeit Germany 28 Sept, 11:50 UTC
Niedrigwasser am Rhein: Niedrigwasser schränkt Schifffahrt auf dem Rhein stark ein
+2 more articlesHide 2 more articles
- Niedrigwasser am Rhein: Niedrigwasser schränkt Schifffahrt auf dem Rhein stark ein 28 Sept, 11:50 UTC
- Trockenheit: Rhein erreicht Rekordtiefstand in Köln 28 Sept, 07:09 UTC
Tagesschau Germany 28 Sept, 06:22 UTC
Prognose unter 40 Zentimeter: Der Rheinpegel soll weiter sinken
NU.nl Netherlands 27 Sept, 14:16 UTC
Waterpeil van de Rijn was nog nooit zo laag door droogte
NOS Netherlands 27 Sept, 10:27 UTC
Rijn bij Keulen lager dan ooit, Nederlandse riviercruise vastgelopen

Middle East 1 outlet

Oman Daily Oman 28 Sept, 15:02 UTC
نهر الراين يسجل أدنى مستوى للمياه في كولونيا