River levels near your walk
Enter a location — or share your position — and see the nearest river monitoring stations with their latest recorded water level, the trend over the last hour, and how the current level compares with the station's typical range. Readings come live from Environment Agency gauges in England and SEPA gauges in Scotland.
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Natural Resources Wales publishes its gauge data through an API that needs a registration key, so this tool cannot query it from your browser. Check Welsh levels directly onNRW's river levels service. A few gauges on cross-border rivers such as the Severn and Dee do appear below via the Environment Agency.
| Station | Dist. | Latest level | Trend (1 h) | Typical range | Reading time |
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This uses Environment Agency flood and river level data from the real-time data API (Beta), under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Scottish readings from SEPA's time series data service (Open Government Licence) — we acknowledge SEPA as the data provider.
What the numbers mean
Most river gauges report stage — the height of the water surface above a local datum fixed at that station, not the depth of the river. A reading of 0.4 m at one station and 2.1 m at another tells you nothing about which river is bigger; what matters is how each station compares with its own usual behaviour.
For English stations the Environment Agency publishes a typical range for exactly this purpose: the level has historically been above the top of the band only 5% of the time, and above the bottom of it 95% of the time. A reading near or above the top of the typical range means the river is carrying much more water than usual. SEPA does not publish an equivalent range through its open API, so for Scottish stations this tool shows the level and trend only — SEPA's ownwater levels site adds historical context for each station.
The trend column compares the latest reading with the reading roughly an hour earlier from the same gauge. Rising water after rain is the pattern that matters most to walkers: upland rivers respond to heavy rain within hours, and a river that is passable on the walk in can be impassable on the walk out.
Using gauges for crossings and gorge walks
River levels are genuinely useful planning data — and easy to over-read. Gauges sit on main rivers, usually in valleys, often kilometres downstream of where a hill route actually crosses the water. The beck or burn you need to ford probably has no gauge at all, and a small steep catchment rises and falls faster than the river its gauge sits on. Treat a gauge as a regional indicator of how much water the hills are shedding, not as a measurement of your crossing point.
- Level well below typical and steady or falling — rivers in the area are carrying little water. Normal crossing judgement still applies.
- Level in the upper part of the typical range, or rising — expect fords to be deeper and faster than the guidebook implies. Have a plan that avoids the crossing.
- Level above typical range — assume unbridged crossings in that catchment are unsafe and plan a route that does not need them. Gorge and ghyll routes concentrate the same water into much less space.
No gauge reading makes a specific crossing safe. Depth, speed, temperature, the runout below the crossing and your group all matter, and conditions change while you walk.Read our safety notes before relying on any of this.
Coverage
England is covered by the Environment Agency's real-time flood-monitoring API, including typical ranges for most river stations. Scotland is covered by SEPA's time series API (levels and trends, no published typical range).Wales is the honest gap: Natural Resources Wales requires an API key for its gauge data, which a purely in-browser tool cannot use without publishing the key, so this page does not show Welsh stations — useNRW's river levels serviceinstead. A handful of Environment Agency gauges on cross-border rivers do appear for locations near the Welsh border. Northern Ireland's gauges are published by DfI Rivers without a comparable open live API.
Gauges typically record every 15 minutes, but transmission to the open APIs can lag by an hour or more — the reading time column shows exactly how old each value is, and clearly old readings are flagged.