Vale of White Horse catchment
• Culham • Oxfordshire • ID: 1800TH • Level
(25m ago) • 4 readings/hr • 156 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 m/hr — a sign of rapidly increasing water levels.
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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Not an emergency service — if in danger call 999. Alerts rely on
EA/SEPA/NRW data and are best-efforts. Terms
Current Level
2.092 mASD
▼ Falling (-2cm/hr)
24h Max
2.192 mASD
24h Min
2.063 mASD
Typical Range
1.91 - 3.51
mASD
Highest Recorded
4.44 mASD
EA official record
A 8.31 reading (15 May 2025) sits in our unverified raw history and is not treated as the record
Current level is 47% of this
Current Flow
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🚽Sewage overflows nearby
Recent Water Levels
🌍 floodradar.co.uk
1 day
EA forecast (official)
Prediction V2
Prediction Eris
Nimbus beta
Experimental model fusing soil moisture, river flow, groundwater and catchment
character. The shaded band is its 10–90% range, widened so that about 80% of recent outcomes fall inside it.
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.
Flow Data: Daily mean flow (m³/s) to 8 Oct (2 days behind — the EA publishes each day's mean a day or two after it ends; unchecked, provisional)via EA Hydrology
Storm overflows whose water reaches this gauge on the mapped river network, nearest first by distance along the river. The status is each water company's monitor: it says whether an overflow is discharging, not how much or what it contains.
59 storm overflows are traced upstream of this gauge, the nearest 4.7 km away along the river. 0 report discharging now, 58 report not discharging, and for 1 the monitor is offline or has not reported, so their status is not known.
Thames Water · into Clifton Hampden Ditch · 2.4 km away in a straight line · no mapped watercourse close enough to be sure
38 spills · 378 hours in 2025
Not discharging now · last
1 other overflow within 6 km is downstream of this gauge or on another branch of the river network, so it is not listed.
These are the water companies' monitor statuses; a spill does not by itself explain a change in the gauge level. River connections and distances are traced on OS Open Rivers (edition 2026-04), which leaves out many small channels. Explore the sewage map →
In a typical year this gauge reaches its typical high of 3.51 m
on about 15 days.
This year so far: 27 days.
202627 days, 12 of them high · 12 highso far
20259 days
202454 days, 27 of them high · 27 high
202314 days, 3 of them high · 3 high
20220 days
202119 days, 11 of them high · 11 high
202020 days, 6 of them high · 6 high
201914 days
20184 days
20170 days
Counted from each day's highest reading. Days with missing or implausible readings are left out.
The darker part is days above 3.84 m, the level this gauge tops only a few days a year.
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.
Flood areas linked to this gauge
Flood warnings and alerts are issued for whole areas. These are the 16 areas linked to this gauge, nearest first.
🌊 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 Daily Mean Flow
218 m³/s
5 Jan 2003 · daily mean, not the instantaneous peak
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
Frequently asked questions
Is the River Thames at Sutton Courtenay flooding today?
The current level is 2.09m, 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 falling. The chart above shows the last 12 hours of measurements by default (up to 7 days), updated roughly every 15 minutes.
Why is the level slowly falling?
When little or no rain has fallen for a while, a river level gradually drops as the water stored in the ground and soil drains away with nothing to replace it. This is called baseflow recession and is normal in dry spells. A gentle decline like this is expected and is not a sign of a problem — downstream gauges often recede a little faster than headwaters further upstream, and levels recover once rain returns.
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 supplied by the Environment Agency gauge. FloodRadar checks for updates roughly every 15 minutes; the timestamp above shows how recent the latest available reading is.
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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:
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