Aire and Calder catchment
• West Yorkshire • ID: F1650 • Level
(31m ago) • 4 readings/hr • 165 views
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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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Current Level
0.206 m
▼ Easing
24h Max
0.227 m
24h Min
0.151 m
Typical Range
0.16 - 0.40
m
Highest Recorded
2.81 m
EA official record
1.09 in our data (since Sep 1983)
Current level is 7% of this
🚽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 4 May (1254 days behind — the EA publishes each day's mean a day or two after it ends; suspect, 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.
28 storm overflows are traced upstream of this gauge, the nearest 510 m away along the river. 0 report discharging now, 28 report not discharging.
Yorkshire Water · into Brackendale Beck · 2.3 km away in a straight line · several watercourses close by, nothing to choose between them
51 spills · 105 hours in 2025
Not discharging now · last
35 more within 6 km whose connection is not known.
41 other overflows within 6 km are downstream of this gauge or on another branch of the river network, so they are 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 0.40 m
on about 49 days.
This year so far: 27 days.
202627 days so far
202545 days, 1 of them high · 1 high
202449 days, 3 of them high · 3 high
202362 days, 6 of them high · 6 high
202243 days, 3 of them high · 3 high
202148 days, 4 of them high · 4 high
202063 days, 4 of them high · 4 high
201957 days, 3 of them high · 3 high
201843 days
201733 days, 1 of them high · 1 high
Counted from each day's highest reading. Days with missing or implausible readings are left out.
The darker part is days above 1.14 m, the level this gauge tops only a few days a year.
Flood history near this gauge
Official Environment Agency warnings issued since 2011 for the 3 flood
areas linked to this gauge (nearest 3.9 km away).
🌊 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
0.53
mixed response
Avg Annual Rainfall
965 mm/yr
1991–2020 · +4% since 1941–70
Urban Extent
42%
heavily urbanised
Highest Daily Mean Flow
13.90 m³/s
20 Feb 2022 · 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.
Flat-V weir in a heavily urbanised catchment on Bradford Beck.
More detail
The catchment
A heavily urbanised catchment.
The station
Flat-V weir, 1:10 cross-slope in a relatively steep channel.
How it measures flow
Weir drowns below QMED, so high flows are unreliable. There is a downstream level recorder, but processed flows assume modularity. New rating applied in 2015 - upper limb reduced from 2m to 1.2m to reflect the modular limit. Flow is calculated above 1.2m but flagged as estimated.
Flow regime
Some import of water (storm overflows which make for an even flashier regime) otherwise net effect of abstractions and discharges is small.
The flow record
Flows reprocessed in 2015 after new rating implemented.
Timing, not cause. Gauges can move together simply because the same rain fell on both.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Bradford Beck at Shipley flooding today?
The current level is 0.21m, which is within the typical range of 0.16 to 0.40m. Flooding is unlikely at this level.
Is the river level rising or falling at Shipley?
Based on the most recent readings, the level is currently falling slightly. 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 Bradford Beck at Shipley?
The typical range at this station is 0.16m to 0.40m, based on Environment Agency historical data. Levels above 0.40m 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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13 Sep 2011 Upstream view of gauging station from right bank
13 Sep 2011 Downstream view from gauging station on right bank
13 Sep 2011 View of channel upstream of gauging station
13 Sep 2011 Downstream view of gauging station from right bank
13 Sep 2011 Downstream view from gauging station on right bank