UK Flood Warnings & River Levels Area Monitor

What does UK Flood Warnings & River Levels Area Monitor do?

This tool returns current UK flood warnings and river levels for any point and radius you choose, straight from the Environment Agency's official real-time flood-monitoring API. It returns both the active flood alerts/warnings for the area and the latest river and sea level reading from every monitoring station nearby, so insurers, surveyors, property and real-estate risk teams, and local resilience planners get one feed for area-level flood risk screening. An alert mode keeps memory between runs so a scheduled "area-watch" job only reports warnings that are new or have changed.

What you get

• Flood warnings and alerts currently in force near the point: severity, full warning message, the affected river or sea, county, and when it was raised/last changed.
• River and sea level readings: the latest reading from every monitoring station in the radius, with the station name, river, parameter (water level, flow, etc.), unit and timestamp.
• An alert mode (onlyNewWarnings) for scheduled, recurring area-watch monitoring.
• Use from AI agents through the Apify MCP server, or from code/Google Sheets/Slack like any Apify Actor.

How much does it cost?

You pay per record saved, with no monthly fee: $2.50 per 1,000 records on Apify's free plan, and 10-40% less on paid Apify plans. Each run also costs $0.001 to start. Apify's free plan includes $5 of credit every month, enough for about 2,000 records. Prices as of November 2026; the price shown on this page is the one that applies.

Use	Records	Cost on the free plan
One area check (warnings + ~20 station readings)	about 25	about $0.06
A daily scheduled area-watch, alert mode on	about 20-30 a day (about 750/month)	about $1.90 a month

Set Maximum cost per run to cap any run; the Actor stops cleanly at the cap and keeps everything it saved.

Ready-made inputs

Three real use cases, each tested in a local run:

{ "lat": 52.4, "long": 1.6, "dist": 15 }

{ "lat": 51.5, "long": -0.12, "dist": 20 }

{ "lat": 51.28, "long": 0.52, "dist": 20, "minSeverity": "1", "includeRiverLevels": true }

Alerts (area-watch monitor)

Turn on Only new/changed warnings (alert mode) and schedule the Actor to run daily or hourly. It remembers, per area and severity filter, which flood warnings it has already reported (by flood area and the time its message last changed), and only returns a warning again if it is new or its message has changed — so you never pay twice for the same unchanged warning. River/sea level readings are a point-in-time snapshot and are always returned fresh on every run regardless of this setting; turn off Include river/sea level readings if you only want the warning alert feed.

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
lat	number	required	Latitude (WGS84) of the centre point.
long	number	required	Longitude (WGS84) of the centre point.
dist	number	15	Search radius in kilometres (1-50).
minSeverity	string	"" (all)	"1" = Severe Flood Warning only, "2" = also Flood Warning, "3" = also Flood Alert.
includeRiverLevels	boolean	true	Also return the latest level reading from stations in the radius.
maxStations	integer	30	Maximum number of stations to fetch level readings for (1-200).
onlyNewWarnings	boolean	false	Alert mode: only output warnings new or changed since the last run with the same area/severity.

This tool takes a latitude/longitude point, not a postcode, because the source API itself has no postcode lookup. Convert a postcode or address to coordinates first with a free tool such as postcodes.io or Google Maps.

Output

One dataset item per flood warning or per station level reading. recordType tells you which: flood_warning or river_level_reading. Fields that do not apply to a record's type are null.

A real flood warning from a live run:

{
  "recordType": "flood_warning",
  "sourceUrl": "http://environment.data.gov.uk/flood-monitoring/id/floods/054WATBT1",
  "floodAreaID": "054WATBT1",
  "areaDescription": "The tidal Rivers Bure, Ant and Thurne",
  "county": "Norfolk",
  "riverOrSea": "Bure, Ant, Thurne",
  "severity": "Flood alert",
  "severityLevel": 3,
  "message": "High tides tomorrow morning may lead to flooding...",
  "isTidal": true,
  "timeRaised": "2026-11-01T15:44:21",
  "timeSeverityChanged": "2026-11-01T15:44:00",
  "timeMessageChanged": "2026-11-01T15:44:00"
}

A real river level reading from a live run:

{
  "recordType": "river_level_reading",
  "sourceUrl": "http://environment.data.gov.uk/flood-monitoring/data/readings/E70039-level-tidal_level-Mean-15_min-mAOD/2026-11-02T01-45-00Z",
  "stationReference": "E70039",
  "label": "Lowestoft",
  "town": "Lowestoft",
  "riverName": "Tide",
  "catchmentName": "England - East Coast",
  "lat": 52.473075,
  "long": 1.750085,
  "parameter": "level",
  "parameterName": "Water Level",
  "qualifier": "Tidal Level",
  "unitName": "mAOD",
  "value": 1.047,
  "dateTime": "2026-11-02T01:45:00Z"
}

severityLevel 1 is most severe (Severe Flood Warning), 4 is a warning no longer in force. dateTime and the time* fields are ISO 8601. Water levels are usually relative to local datum (unitName such as mASD or mAOD); compare a station's own readings over time rather than across stations.

Use it from AI agents

Add the Actor to Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor or any MCP client through the Apify MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com?tools=tabulary/uk-flood-risk-area-monitor). Ask in plain language, for example: "Are there any flood warnings within 20km of Maidstone, Kent, and what are the current river levels?" The agent fills in the coordinates and gets structured records back.

Use it from code

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/tabulary~uk-flood-risk-area-monitor/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"lat": 52.4, "long": 1.6, "dist": 15}'

The same works with the Apify Python and JavaScript clients. See the API tab for details.

Data source and limits

• Source: the Environment Agency's real-time flood-monitoring API (Beta), under the Open Government Licence v3.0, no registration required. This uses Environment Agency flood and river level data from the real-time data API (Beta).
• Covers England (and tidal/coastal stations into neighbouring areas); it does not cover Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, which publish separate flood services.
• The source "should not be relied upon for safety-critical applications" (the EA's own wording). This tool is for informational area screening and business risk monitoring, not a life-safety warning system — always direct anyone at real flood risk to the official GOV.UK flood warning service.
• Readings and warnings are updated by the source roughly every 15 minutes; the Actor fetches at most one request per second and backs off on errors.
• No personal data: output is station- and area-level readings and warnings only.
• Not affiliated with or endorsed by the Environment Agency.

Other Tabulary tools

Clean data from official and public sources, priced per result:

• UK Gender Pay Gap Reports
• UK House Price Index Stats
• UK Modern Slavery Statements
• UK Storm Overflow Annual Data

FAQ

Is this data official? Yes — every record comes directly from the Environment Agency's own real-time flood-monitoring API, unmodified apart from field renaming.

How fresh is it? The source updates roughly every 15 minutes; each run fetches live data at request time.

Why coordinates and not a postcode or place name? The source API itself only supports latitude/longitude and county-name search, not postcodes. Convert a postcode first with a free tool such as postcodes.io.

Something broke? Open an issue on the Issues tab. The Actor is tested daily.

Changelog

• 2026-11-01: first version: flood warnings/alerts and river/sea level readings by point and radius, with a new-since-last-run alert mode for warnings.

About Tabulary

This tool is part of Tabulary: clean tables from official public sources. Every Tabulary tool uses the source's official API or open data where one exists, collects no personal data, and is tested on Apify every day. Questions or ideas? Open an issue on the Issues tab.