Vale of White Horse catchment
• Culham • Oxfordshire • ID: 1800TH • Level
(28m ago) • 4 readings/hr • 133 views
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⤴Unusual rise — FloodRadar+Top 1% rise rate for this gauge.
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You'll be notified when this gauge is rising more than 0.10 mASD/hr — a sign of rapidly increasing water levels.
Beta. You'll be notified when a flood wave detected at an upstream gauge is forecast to reach this station, with an estimated arrival time. Accuracy improves as we verify more waves.
You'll be notified when a new storm-overflow (sewage) discharge starts within ~3 km of this gauge, based on the water companies' near-real-time feeds.
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Current Level
2.077 mASD
▬ Steady
24h Max
2.077 mASD
24h Min
2.050 mASD
Typical Range
1.91 - 3.51
mASD
Highest Recorded
8.31 mASD
15 May 2025
Since Jul 1984
Current level is 25% of this
Current Flow
Loading...
🚽Sewage overflows nearby
Recent Water Levels
🌍 floodradar.co.uk
1 day
Prediction V2
Prediction Eris
Nimbus beta
Experimental model fusing soil moisture, river flow, groundwater and catchment
character. Shown with its calibrated 10–90% confidence band. Under evaluation —
not yet promoted, so treat as a second opinion.
River Flow
90 days
Daily mean discharge (m³/s) with the daily min–max band, from the EA Hydrology API. Flow is the volume of water passing the gauge — often a more direct flood signal than level.
Long Term
🌍 floodradar.co.uk
—
Consecutive rainy days0 → 10+
Days Above Normal
This year vs 5-year monthly range
Recent Readings
Rising · +0.9 cm over 6h
23 Aug 23:45▬ steady2.077 mASD
23 Aug 23:30▬ steady2.077 mASD
23 Aug 23:15▬ steady2.077 mASD
23 Aug 23:00▬ steady2.076 mASD
23 Aug 22:45▲ +0.2 cm2.076 mASD
23 Aug 21:30▬ steady2.074 mASD
23 Aug 21:15▬ steady2.073 mASD
23 Aug 21:00▬ steady2.073 mASD
23 Aug 20:45▬ steady2.073 mASD
23 Aug 20:30▬ steady2.072 mASD
23 Aug 20:15▬ steady2.072 mASD
23 Aug 20:00▬ steady2.071 mASD
23 Aug 19:45▬ steady2.071 mASD
23 Aug 19:30▲ +0.1 cm2.071 mASD
23 Aug 19:15▬ steady2.070 mASD
23 Aug 19:00▬ steady2.069 mASD
23 Aug 18:45▬ steady2.069 mASD
23 Aug 18:30▬ steady2.068 mASD
23 Aug 18:15▬ steady2.067 mASD
23 Aug 18:002.068 mASD
Rainfall & Weather
Loading rainfall and weather data...
Flood history near this gauge
Official Environment Agency warnings issued since 2008 for the 16 flood
areas linked to this gauge (nearest 1.3 km away).
Warnings apply to a whole flood area, not necessarily this exact spot. Years before 2006 aren't covered by the EA's historic record.
See also the Culham flood history.
Geographic coordinates may reflect the access point for the gauge, and not the precise location in the watercourse that it is taking readings from.
Catchment Character
🌊 Mixed responseA balance of quick runoff and slower groundwater baseflow.
Your catchment is all the land that drains rainfall into the river above this gauge. Its character — how
steep, wet, wooded, urban or chalky that land is — decides how fast rain here turns into a rising river. A steep, bare or clay
catchment is “flashy” (rises and falls quickly, floods easily); a flat, chalk or well-wooded one is
slow and steady. The tiles below put numbers to that; the flow-duration curve reads left-to-right
from the river’s typical high flows (Q5) down to its low flows (Q95) — a steep curve means a flashy river.
The physical character of the land that drains to this gauge, and how it shapes its flood response — from the National River Flow Archive (UKCEH).
Baseflow Index
0.65
mixed response
Avg Annual Rainfall
749 mm/yr
1991–2020 · +4% since 1941–70
Urban Extent
2.9%
largely rural
Highest Recorded Flow
218 m³/s
5 Jan 2003
Flow-Duration Curve
Daily flow (m³/s) exceeded each % of the time — a steep curve is flashy, a flat one is steady. Q5 high · Q50 median · Q95 low.
The ultrasonic gauging station is located on the River Thames between the off-take and discharge for Didcot Power Station.
More detail
The catchment
Mixed geology: Oolitic L'st headwaters, Oxford Clay below. Mainly rural with development concentrated in the valleys.
The station
NIVUS multi-path ultrasonic replaced earlier Sarasota multi-path ultrasonic in 2021. This replaced an earlier multi-path ultrasonic no later than 2006, which replaced the original (first in the UK) single-path device in 1982.
How it measures flow
NIVUS ultrasonic gauge has 4 transducers at 45 degrees to flow. No skewness in flow. Spikes in data can be caused when weed growth interferes with the ultrasonic beams; these are removed manually in WISKI. US beam status is logged and sent via telemetry, so hydrometrists are aware of problems before visiting. Very rarely, boats moor in the US path and affect readings. Radar sensor for water level measurement installed in 2021 - previously stilling well with shaft encoder. The radar always chooses the strongest echo and suppresses weaker echoes. It can struggle with duck weed and lilies dispersing the beam. All but the highest flows are contained with significant bypassing in exceptional floods. Remote control ADCP boats are used to gauge at this site. Exceptionally high flows are difficult to gauge as the right-hand floodplain is separated from the river by a fence. Low flows can be difficult to gauge as lock movements nearby u/s and d/s can create slow waves, which may cause negative flows. Gaugings are taken in the early morning whenever possible to avoid lock effects, and 8 transects are taken instead of 4.
Flow regime
Rectangular channel in straight, navigable reach where levels and the velocity profile can be influenced by u/s and d/s locks.
The flow record
Early data of lower precision with isolated extreme minima and some negative flows in 1976 (not archived). Naturalised daily flows are available. No data between November 2019 and March 2021 due to gauge failure. Data are set as missing when there are so many spikes recorded that the despiked data are unrepresentative. GDF can exceed peak flow if a spike occurs at the time of peak flow.
How this gauging station is built and how long it has measured (NRFA / UKCEH).
Gauge type
Ultrasonic
Operating since
1974
Station datum
44.9 mAOD
Flow record
1973–2024 · 51 yrs · 88% complete
Hydrometric area
39
Measured by
Environment Agency
Nearby Groundwater
Soil Moisture
Possible storm-overflow correlation
🚽 Storm overflows on this river
Frequently asked questions
Is the River Thames at Sutton Courtenay flooding today?
The current level is 2.08m, which is within the typical range of 1.91 to 3.51m. Flooding is unlikely at this level.
Is the river level rising or falling at Sutton Courtenay?
Based on the most recent readings, the level is currently steady. The chart above shows the last 7 days of measurements, updated roughly every 15 minutes.
What is a normal level for the River Thames at Sutton Courtenay?
The typical range at this station is 1.91m to 3.51m, based on Environment Agency historical data. Levels above 3.51m are higher than usually seen and may indicate a flood risk.
How often is this river level data updated?
Readings are taken by the Environment Agency gauge roughly every 15 minutes and FloodRadar refreshes its data continuously, so the level shown is normally less than an hour old.
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📮 Flood risk by postcode near this gauge
Postcodes within 5 km with properties in the Environment Agency’s rivers-and-sea flood-risk bands:
