Northern Manchester catchment
• Kearsley • Greater Manchester • ID: 690503 • Level
(21m ago) • 4 readings/hr • 142 views
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Current Level
0.681 m
▬ Steady
24h Max
0.705 m
24h Min
0.650 m
Typical Range
0.62 - 4.05
m
Highest Recorded
6.33 m
26 Dec 2015
Since Nov 2002
Current level is 11% 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 · +2 cm over 6h
23 Aug 23:30▲ +0.3 cm0.681 m
23 Aug 23:15▼ -0.7 cm0.678 m
23 Aug 23:00▲ +1 cm0.685 m
23 Aug 22:45▼ -0.3 cm0.672 m
23 Aug 21:30▼ -2 cm0.675 m
23 Aug 21:15▲ +0.1 cm0.691 m
23 Aug 21:00▲ +0.2 cm0.690 m
23 Aug 20:45▲ +0.8 cm0.688 m
23 Aug 20:30▲ +1 cm0.680 m
23 Aug 20:15▼ -0.3 cm0.669 m
23 Aug 20:00▼ -0.3 cm0.672 m
23 Aug 19:45▼ -1 cm0.675 m
23 Aug 19:30▲ +0.9 cm0.688 m
23 Aug 19:15▲ +1 cm0.679 m
23 Aug 19:00▼ -2 cm0.669 m
23 Aug 18:45▼ -0.1 cm0.689 m
23 Aug 18:30▲ +0.7 cm0.690 m
23 Aug 18:15▲ +0.1 cm0.683 m
23 Aug 18:00▲ +2 cm0.682 m
23 Aug 17:450.666 m
Rainfall & Weather
Loading rainfall and weather data...
Flood history near this gauge
Official Environment Agency warnings issued since 2007 for the 24 flood
areas linked to this gauge (nearest 0.4 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 Kearsley 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
🌊 Urban & flashyHeavily built-up — rain runs off hard surfaces fast, so levels can spike within hours of heavy rain.
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
0.42
mixed response
Avg Annual Rainfall
1,354 mm/yr
1991–2020 · +7% since 1941–70
Urban Extent
15%
heavily urbanised
Highest Recorded Flow
318 m³/s
26 Dec 2015
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.
Flow affected by: surface-water abstraction, public water supply, groundwater abstraction, effluent returns, industrial / agricultural abstraction.
About this gauge
Open channel rated flow site. Brick station building on left bank of the Irwell at Kearsley housing a Seba electric winch for flow gauging.
More detail
The catchment
Largely rural / farmland in upper reaches then becoming more urban through lower reaches upstream of station.
The station
Commissioned November 2002 to facilitate the operation of Littleton Road storage basin a further 8km downstream of the station in Salford. Originally level only, ultrasonics were installed to provide flow data for FCRM. Ultrasonics are no longer operational and flow data from the site has been re-processed using rating curves.
How it measures flow
Flow ratings produced based on a combination of now defunct ultrasonic stage / flow pairs and gaugings together with modelled high flows above stages of 4m (level of maximum gauging). Two ratings across period of record, before and after the December 2015 high flows that significantly changed the bed geometry.
How this gauging station is built and how long it has measured (NRFA / UKCEH).
Gauge type
Velocity–area
Operating since
1948
Station datum
40.6 mAOD
Flow record
2003–2024 · 21 yrs · 99% complete
Hydrometric area
69
Measured by
Environment Agency
Nearby Groundwater
Soil Moisture
Possible storm-overflow correlation
🚽 Storm overflows on this river
Frequently asked questions
Is the River Irwell at Kearsley flooding today?
The current level is 0.68m, which is within the typical range of 0.62 to 4.05m. Flooding is unlikely at this level.
Is the river level rising or falling at Kearsley?
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 Irwell at Kearsley?
The typical range at this station is 0.62m to 4.05m, based on Environment Agency historical data. Levels above 4.05m 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:
