While the use of remote hydrometers for measuring the level in water courses is both economical and widespread, the same cannot be said for cross section and channel profile measurements and, even less, for rating curves at the measuring cross sections, all of which are more often than not incomplete, out of date, and unreliable. The mass of data involved in level measurements alone induces a degree of perplexity in those who try to use them, for example, for flood event simulations or the construction of forecasting models which are not purely statistical. This paper proposes a method which uses recorded level data alone to construct a simulation model and a forecasting model, both of them characterized by an extremely simple structure that can be used on any pocket calculator. These models, referring to a river reach bounded by two measuring sections, furnish the downstream levels, where the upstream levels are known, and the downstream level at time t+Δt*, where the upstream and downstream levels are known at time t, respectively. The numerical applications performed show that while the simulation model is somewhat penalized by the simplifications adopted, giving not consistently satisfactory results on validation, the forecasting model generated good results in all the cases examined and seems reliable. ¿ American Geophysical Union 1994