Built in Carnation,
Washington.

I'm Nayab Khan, founder of ToltHawk. In 2015, after the passing of my mother and the end of my corporate engineering career, I semi-retired, purchased a small farm, and began growing blueberries in the beautiful Snoqualmie Valley near Seattle. That summer, I bought a tractor to help remove weeds and prepare the land.

During the winter, our region receives heavy rainfall. One night, a concerned neighbor called to warn me that flooding had reached the farm and that my tractor might be underwater. At dawn, I made the hour-long drive to the property only to discover that my expensive investment had been completely destroyed by the flood.

That experience led me to search for a reliable water level sensor that could provide effective flood monitoring and alerts. When I found that existing solutions were either too expensive, too complicated, or not designed for real-world community use, I decided to develop one myself.

My goal was simple: design an accurate, reliable, and cost-effective water gauge that could help communities better predict flooding and improve public safety. That was the beginning of ToltHawk.

Initially, we built sensors for local nonprofit organizations and supplied them essentially at cost. As nearby communities learned about the technology, demand steadily grew. Our first-generation ToltHawk sensors were simple electronic systems housed inside PVC pipe enclosures, with battery life lasting roughly four to five months per charge.

Over time, the technology evolved significantly. By Version 2, the devices incorporated solar charging and could operate year-round without requiring manual recharging. Today, we are on Version 4.5, featuring advanced radar technology and integrated environmental sensing capable of highly accurate water level and flow measurements.

What began as a simple flood warning device has since expanded into a broader platform supporting stormwater monitoring, sewer flow measurement, and flood detection applications. Along the way, we also developed cloud-based services that allow customers to remotely monitor conditions, receive alerts, and share critical data with their own communities without requiring constant manual oversight.

Today, ToltHawk sensors are helping agencies, municipalities, utilities, and communities gain better visibility into flood risks and water conditions while improving safety and response capabilities.