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Predicting the Katherine Township River levels and peaks.

Firstly let me say I have no idea about hydrology and this page is all based on my reasoning (which is known to be flawed), however since the new theories on evacuating town in case of flood is based on our own knowledge we need to all have a bit better understanding on what happens when the Katherine river catches a bit of rain and poses those issues.

I am starting out with a snapshot of the two height charts supplied on line by NT Water Resources. (And they indicate with an * that these figures are not confirmed and only based on remote sensing instruments.) One is out at the Gorge & the other is the well known "Old Railway Bridge" (that has the very big numbers on it that are out slightly)

I have tried to make it as simple as possible.

River Heights from Nitmiluk February 2007		River Heights from Katherine  Railway Bridge February 2007
	To our left we have a selection of UNCONFIRMED water heights from Nitmiluk Gorge Gauging station. It indicates that the river peaked at 0.94M at between 8-9AM on Thursday 08Feb07. On our right we have the UNCONFIRMED Katherine River height chart from the Old Railway bridge gauge. It indicates the Katherine River peaked in town at 6.65M between 9 - Midnight on the same day. (About 12-15 hrs later) What does this little example mean in this case? This particular volume / river level seems to indicate that there is 12-15 hrs difference in peaking between the Gorge & Town.- (I have no records on volumes) No doubt that different heights & volumes mean different peak timings? (Will have to keep doing different comparisons) Other Factors not taken into consideration.... Other waterways entering Katherine River after the Nitmiluk Gauge like Maud Creek & 2 mile creek.

Then we have the prediction of working out what what level does Nitmiluk mean to Katherine when we really need to know.
Look at the cross section plot charts below & you will notice that both sites are not uniform and taper outwards as the height increases. Nitmiluk plot example is 750 metres across & Katherine plot is 300 metres across. Not an easy task to make predictions with. However over time we should be able to get some "rough guesses" as we chart various wet seasons.

The Nitmiluk chart (water level in this plot relates to levels on 10Feb07 and not to peaks in the top charts)	Katherine Railway Bridge plot (water level relates to 10Feb07 and not to peaks indicated on above chart)

To really get a better understanding we need to get some better illustrations & charts of when the river gets back to 15+ metres again. So more information will be added here in due course.

    As for the March 2007 current information collected, please move on to here