Only One Pakistani Flood Warning Site Updates Daily
We opened every official flood source in Pakistan, then retested on 26 August. Sindh has been fixed. The forwarded Punjab address still fails.
Pakistan is in the middle of a monsoon that has already killed people and filled Tarbela to near capacity. So we did the obvious thing. We opened every official flood warning source in the country and wrote down what happened.
The short answer: one site is genuinely live. It is ffd.pmd.gov.pk, the Flood Forecasting Division of the Pakistan Meteorological Department. When we tested it on 10 August 2026 its dashboard was stamped 06:00 that morning.
Most of the others load. Loading is not the same as telling you anything.
Retested on 26 August, and one thing has been fixed
Update, 26 August 2026. We ran the reachability test again, sixteen days after the original, in the middle of monsoon season. Two attempts per address, thirty seconds each, and a fallback to plain http before recording a failure. Most of what we found in August still stands. One finding does not, and it is the good kind of change.
| Address | 26 August result | Against 10 August |
|---|---|---|
| ffd.pmd.gov.pk | Loads, flood and advisory content | Unchanged, still the one to use |
| pdma.gos.pk, Sindh | Loads normally over a secure connection | Fixed since our first test |
| pdma.punjab.gov.pk | Loads, advisory content | Unchanged, still the working Punjab site |
| pdma.gop.pk, the forwarded one | Secure connection still fails | Unchanged, still the wrong address |
| pdma.gov.pk, KP | Loads, about 8,700 words of content | Unchanged, still the working KP site |
| pdma.kp.gov.pk | Answers, but 39 words of text | Unchanged, still effectively empty |
| pdma.gob.pk, Balochistan | Loads | Unchanged |
| pakirsa.gov.pk | Plain http only | Unchanged, still no padlock |
| ffc.gov.pk, Federal Flood Commission | Secure connection never completed, plain http returned a server error on two of four tries | New to this test |
Two cautions about our own method, because they matter. First, this round tested whether a page loads and carries flood content, not whether it is updated daily. The daily updating claim below is from the original test on 10 August and we have not re-verified the frequency. Second, our first attempt on three of these addresses returned nothing and then worked on retry, which is why the test now retries before recording a failure. A single failed request is not evidence that a site is down.
One more thing worth knowing if you land on NDMA looking for a current warning. The featured advisory strip on its homepage was showing April 2026 items when we looked, while the advisories page itself carried entries up to 21 August. Go to the advisories list rather than trusting the front page banner.
The one site that is actually updated daily
The Flood Forecasting Division sits in Lahore and is part of the Met Department. Its dashboard gives a state for each major river rather than a paragraph of advice.
At 06:00 PKT on 10 August 2026 it read:
| River | State |
|---|---|
| Indus | Low |
| Kabul | Below Low |
| Jhelum | Below Low |
| Neelum | Below Low |
| Chenab | Below Low |
| Ravi | Below Low |
| Sutlej | Below Low |
The same page showed 56 flood bulletins issued this season, the most recent on 9 August at 12:02, and two flood advisories, the most recent from 22 July.
That is worth knowing on its own. The rivers were not in flood on the morning we checked, whatever a forwarded voice note may be telling you. River levels change fast, so check it yourself rather than trusting this sentence tomorrow.
Everything we tested, and what came back
Tested by direct request from one machine on 10 August 2026. Every failure was retried over plain http, with and without www, and on other addresses before we called anything broken.
| Source | Address | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Flood Forecasting Division | ffd.pmd.gov.pk | Works, updated 06:00 today |
| Met Department | weather.gov.pk | Works |
| Met Department, old address | pmd.gov.pk | Blank page that redirects by script |
| NDMA advisories | ndma.gov.pk/advisories | Works, newest item 28 July |
| PDMA Punjab | pdma.punjab.gov.pk | Works, helpline 1129 |
| PDMA Punjab, shared address | pdma.gop.pk | Secure connection did not complete |
| PDMA Khyber Pakhtunkhwa | pdma.gov.pk | Works, helpline 1700 |
| PDMA KP, other address | pdma.kp.gov.pk | Loads, content not in the page |
| PDMA Sindh | pdma.gos.pk | Did not open for us on the day |
| PDMA Balochistan | pdma.gob.pk | Works |
| AJK disaster authority | None found | No site on any address tried |
| IRSA, dam and river data | pakirsa.gov.pk | Plain http only |
| WAPDA | wapda.gov.pk | Works, no daily water report |
| Rescue 1122 Punjab | rescue.gov.pk | Works |
Sindh's disaster authority site would not open
pdma.gos.pk is the official address of the Provincial Disaster Management Authority for Sindh. The domain resolves, so the server is there and answering.
The secure connection did not complete for us. We tried the plain domain, the www version and older security settings going back to TLS 1.0. Each attempt returned the same handshake error. Plain http did not resolve it either.
This has since been fixed. On 26 August 2026 the same address loaded normally over a secure connection and served a full page carrying flood, advisory and alert content. What follows is the record of what we found on 10 August and why it mattered at the time. It is no longer the current position.
To be clear about what this is and is not. There is no indication of any security breach, and none is suggested here. A certificate or handshake fault means a browser may show a warning instead of the page.
What makes it worth recording is the week it happened in. Sindh spent these days counting drowning deaths in Jacobabad and Hyderabad, and a divisional commissioner issued an emergency order under Section 144 in response. Through all of it, the provincial disaster authority's own site was the one a reader could not open, and the helpline printed on that site cannot be read from that site.
The Punjab address everyone shares is the broken one
Punjab has a working disaster authority site. It is at pdma.punjab.gov.pk, it loads normally, and its helpline is 1129.
The address that circulates in forwarded messages, pdma.gop.pk, fails its security certificate. Note the difference: .gop.pk against .gov.pk. Several Punjab bodies use the shorter suffix and it catches people out constantly.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has the same problem in reverse. pdma.gov.pk is the working KP site, with helpline 1700. The address that looks more correct, pdma.kp.gov.pk, returns a page with nothing in it. Balochistan is at pdma.gob.pk, and that .gob.pk is genuinely how it is spelt.
We could not find any disaster management website for Azad Jammu and Kashmir on any address we tried. We are reporting that as an absence, not as a failure.
NDMA's advisories page is not the live channel
The National Disaster Management Authority is the federal lead body. Its advisories page loads normally.
When we looked on 10 August 2026, the newest advisory listed there was dated 28 July 2026.
Set that against what NDMA was doing over the same fortnight. Its warnings about rising river flows, flash floods and urban flooding across districts in all four provinces were reported repeatedly in the national press through early August. Those warnings were issued. They were not on the advisories page.
For a reader the conclusion is practical rather than damning. The archive is not the fastest route to a current warning, and the helpline and WhatsApp number further down this page are.
IRSA works, but only without the padlock
The Indus River System Authority is the body whose dam and river figures end up in every news report about Tarbela and Mangla.
Its site refuses the connection on https and answers normally on plain http. That is the same quirk that had EOBI written off as dead for years when it was working the whole time.
Once you are in, the Daily Water Situation page carried no actual data when we looked, and the Latest Updates column was job advertisements and tender notices. So the numbers the newspapers quote are not readable from the page a member of the public would land on.
What to use, in order
- River levels and flood bulletins: ffd.pmd.gov.pk. This is the one that was current.
- Rain and weather warnings: weather.gov.pk.
- Your province: pdma.punjab.gov.pk, pdma.gov.pk for KP, pdma.gob.pk for Balochistan.
- An emergency in progress: phone it in. Rescue 1122 across most of the country, PDMA Punjab on 1129, PDMA KP on 1700.
- NDMA: 051-111-157-157, or WhatsApp 0300-0881641. Both were printed on its site today.
PDMA Sindh's helpline is reported as 1736. We are labelling that reported rather than verified, because we could not open the site to read it. We could not confirm a number for PDMA Balochistan on its own pages, so we are not printing one.
If you are dealing with water in the street rather than a river, our guide to urban flooding safety covers what to do first. The district-level warnings issued this month are listed in our piece on the NDMA flood alert districts. Numbers we have read off institutions' own pages are collected in our verified helplines directory.
How we tested, and what that does not cover
One machine, in Pakistan, on 10 August 2026, using direct requests with an ordinary browser user agent. Every failure was retried over plain http, with and without www, and on alternative domains before being recorded.
What this does not tell you. A site that was down for us may be up for you, and the reverse. We tested whether pages load and whether their content is readable, not whether the information on them is correct. And a government site that blocks automated requests can look broken when it is fine in a browser, which is why we retried everything rather than reporting the first failure.
None of the failures here were blocks. They were certificates that did not validate for us, pages with no content in the HTML, and one authority for which we could not locate a website.
What this page is, and how to correct it
This is a record of what loaded and what did not, on one date, so a reader in a flood can find a working source quickly. It reports observations. It does not allege wrongdoing by anyone, and it draws no conclusion about why any site behaved as it did.
Certificates expire and hosting changes, so any of this may read differently next week. If a result here is wrong or has since been fixed, tell us and we will retest and correct the page openly.
This is the fifth time we have run this exercise. The earlier rounds covered government websites generally and the electricity companies.
Questions readers are asking
Where can I check river levels in Pakistan today?
ffd.pmd.gov.pk, the Flood Forecasting Division of the Met Department. It was the only source we tested that carried a same-day timestamp, updated at 06:00 on 10 August 2026.
Why does the PDMA Sindh website not open?
When we tested it on 10 August 2026 the secure connection did not complete, so a browser may show a warning instead of the page. The domain resolves and the server answers. There is no indication of any security breach, it is an ordinary technical fault, and it may already have been fixed.
What is the PDMA Punjab helpline?
1129, printed on pdma.punjab.gov.pk, which we read on 10 August 2026. PDMA Khyber Pakhtunkhwa lists 1700 on pdma.gov.pk.
Is pdma.gop.pk the right address for Punjab?
That address did not complete a secure connection for us on 10 August 2026. The Punjab site that worked is pdma.punjab.gov.pk. The suffix .gop.pk is used by some Punjab bodies and is a common source of confusion.
Is NDMA's website down?
No, it loads normally. The newest item on its advisories archive when we checked was dated 28 July 2026, so that particular page is not the fastest route to a current warning. NDMA also publishes by helpline and WhatsApp.
Are the rivers in flood right now?
On the morning of 10 August 2026 the Flood Forecasting Division listed the Indus as Low and every other major river as Below Low. That can change within hours, so check the dashboard rather than relying on this figure.
Does Azad Jammu and Kashmir have a disaster management website?
We could not find one on any address we tried. That is an absence we are reporting, not a site we are calling broken.
About the author
Author
Fajr Riaz is a well-talented author at Pakera.pk with expertise in creative content creation/writing and storytelling. Fajr's strength lies in creating engaging articles, detailed guides, and straight narratives that connect with readers and give meaningful insights. With her accurate attention to detail and passion for writing, Fajr has established herself as a pivotal pillar at Pakera and is invaluable.
