FloodBrief is the plain-English half of a two-site family. We write about how flooding works in the UK — what the warnings mean, how rivers behave, what saturated ground does to risk, and how to get a household ready — without jargon and without drama.
Our sister site, FloodRadar, is the live half: real-time river levels from thousands of Environment Agency and SEPA gauges, official flood warnings, rainfall, storm tracking and flood-risk briefings for any UK postcode. Where a FloodBrief guide explains a thing, FloodRadar usually lets you watch that thing happening.
Our honesty rules
- We never say a property or street will or won’t flood — nobody can promise that. We talk about risk, history and likelihood, with sources.
- We always distinguish a Met Office weather warning (forecast rain) from an Environment Agency flood alert (be prepared) and flood warning (act now). They mean different things and the difference matters.
- Every factual claim should trace to an official or well-documented source, listed at the end of each guide.
- Live numbers come from official monitoring data via FloodRadar, are timestamped, and degrade honestly when a feed is unavailable — you’ll see “unavailable”, never a stale number pretending to be fresh.
Where the data comes from
- Environment Agency real-time flood monitoring API — river levels, flood warnings (England)
- SEPA — Scottish river levels
- Met Office — weather warnings and forecasts
- gov.uk long-term flood risk service — official long-term risk bands
Uses Environment Agency data and other public-sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.
In an emergency: FloodBrief and FloodRadar are not emergency services. If there is danger to life, call 999. For official flood advice call Floodline on 0345 988 1188, and always follow Environment Agency, Met Office and local-authority guidance.