Rivers
Why river cameras exist
Of the 445 cameras on this site, 134 are pointed at rivers: 109 in Japan and 25 abroad. They share a subject and almost nothing else. They were installed for opposite reasons. The Japanese ones are equipment belonging to the offices that manage the rivers; the ones abroad are mostly there to watch what gathers along them.
The same river, watched for opposite reasons
107 of the 109 Japanese cameras come from river offices of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. How they work as flood-control equipment is set out on the Rivers page; this article picks up where that leaves off, with what to actually do once you have one open. The 25 abroad are a different lineage altogether, and they come later on this page.
The names tell you what each camera is for
Read down the list of the 10 cameras on the lower Arakawa and, among bridges like Sasameba and Shin-Arakawa, you find the Iwabuchi floodgate and several emergency boat landings — the gate that holds back or releases water when there is too much of it, and the places boats can bring people and supplies in when the roads cannot be used. The list is ordered by where the river is operated, not by where it looks good. Reading the names alone tells you what can happen on that river.
Japan's 109 cameras are spread over 33 prefectures, thickest in the Chugoku region — Tottori, Shimane, Okayama and Hiroshima. One river often carries several, so opening them in order from the upper reaches down to the mouth shows the same water changing character.
A patrolling stream makes you wait for your spot
The ministry's river streams are videos on YouTube, and one stream cycles through several cameras along the river in turn. What is on screen the moment you arrive is not necessarily the place you came for. Leave it running and it comes round. Not knowing this is how people close the tab, thinking they have the wrong stream.
The 10 lower Arakawa cameras are not video but still images that change once a minute. Nothing to wait for, but what you are looking at can be up to a minute old.
The ministry publishes these as a trial service, and the Chugoku Regional Development Bureau states up front, in the description of each stream, that inspections and faults can take a camera off the air. A stream that will not connect today is not necessarily broken. What is happening when a live camera shows nothing covers the rest.
What part of the river you are seeing is written down
Ranked by how often they appear in the 134 descriptions, the features named are water level, river mouth, bridge, levee, weir, confluence and dam. None of these are highlights we chose; they are what the providers wrote.
A river-mouth camera watches the seam between river and sea, where the tide turns the water around, so the same frame reads differently at different hours. At a confluence you can sometimes see two differently coloured waters meeting. Weirs and floodgates are the structures that change most visibly once the water rises.
Settle the heavy-rain question in advance
These cameras are not a tool for deciding whether to leave. Water levels and warnings are published as numbers by the Japan Meteorological Agency, by local authorities, and on the ministry's river information pages. Decide by those and by your local authority's evacuation information. This site is a directory, not a disaster information source.
The 25 abroad are there for the animals
19 of the 25 cameras abroad belong to explore.org. They are aimed not at managing a river but at what gathers along it. Arrive by the same search and you find yourself watching something entirely different.
- Bears fishing for salmon, concentrated at Brooks Falls and Anan Creek in Alaska. The fish trying to climb the falls and the brown or black bears waiting for them share one frame.
- Birds above the water: peregrine falcons on the Mississippi bluffs, sandhill cranes migrating over the Platte.
- Underwater: the camera at Silver Springs in Florida sits below the surface, and manatees pass it.
- African crossings: the Mara and the Mpala in Kenya and the Olifants in South Africa watch the places animals come down to drink.
The rest belong to the US National Park Service and to Taiwan, and those do show the gorge or the valley itself. Wuling in Taiwan is a river where the endangered Formosan landlocked salmon survives.
Where to start
All 134 are listed under Rivers. Individual rivers have their own pages: The Gono River, The Yamato River, The Rivers of the Kii Peninsula, The Rivers of Hokkaido, Brooks Falls Bears and Salmon and African Rivers among them.
Cameras abroad show nothing while it is night there. Which cameras are in daylight now tells you where it is light, and How we handle the camera images covers the images and the sources.