Rivers and streams

Greater Wellington monitors river and stream health, level and flow at more than 150 sites across the region. On this website, you can view data from some of our automatic river level and flow sites.

The information collected is important for floodwarning, water management during drought periods, and detecting long-term trends in our environment.

At all stations, levels are monitored continuously and at some sites water temperature is also monitored. River level is converted into river flow using a 'rating curve'. At some stations there is no rating curve, so only river level data are available.

The data are logged on a regular basis (usually every 15 minutes) and then uploaded to our database via telemetry (radio or cell phone transmission) every 2 to 3 hours. This is"raw data" because it has not been passed through our quality checks.Once it has been checked it is moved to a secure archive and is referred to as "archived data".

The data we provide for this website is a combination of archived and raw data. The archived data is shown in black and the raw data is shown in red. This ensures that the data we are providing is as accurate and up to date as possible. Should you require the information in a form other than how it is presented here, please contact us and we can usually provide it within two working days

Every quarter we publish summaries of the information collected to give a general picture of recent trends.

River and rainfall levels are also available on Hydroline, which are voice mail boxes updated hourly (calls cost 12 cents per minute) - Hutt Valley  08 322 0170, Kapiti Coast 08 322 0150, Wellington/Porirua 08 322 0190, Wainuiomata/Orongorongo 08 322 0650, Wairarapa rivers 08 322 0669 or Wairarapa rainfall and lakes 08 322 9069.

Click here to view other reports on river levels and flows.