Upstream
One river, one stick, read by wading out and looking.
Flood thresholds
| Level | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 0.0 – 0.5m | Low. Gravel bars exposed at the bend. |
| 0.5 – 1.0m | Normal running level for the season. |
| 1.0 – 1.4m | Elevated. Footpath below the weir starts to flood. |
| 1.4 – 1.8m | High. Lower field floods, gauge post base submerged. |
| Above 1.8m | Flood. Gauge unreadable from the bank, don't try. |
Reading schedule
Read most mornings, weather allowing, always before nine and always from the same spot on the bank rather than from the footbridge, where the angle makes the meniscus hard to judge accurately. After heavy rain upstream the reading moves to twice a day until the level settles back under a metre, since the river here can rise close to 20cm an hour on the steepest part of a spate.
The gauge itself is a graduated post set in concrete at the pool below the old ford, calibrated by hand against a fixed benchmark on the ford wall rather than any external datum, so readings here are only meaningful relative to each other and to the two events on record below.
Two events on record
Three days of continuous rain on already saturated ground. The gauge post was submerged to its top mark by the second morning; the final peak figure is an estimate from the waterline left on the ford wall rather than a direct reading, since the post itself was unreadable at the time.
A faster, shorter spike after a single overnight storm rather than sustained rain — rose from 0.6m to peak in under fourteen hours and was back under a metre by the following evening. The lower field flooded but the footpath reopened within two days.