What's changed on Flood Forecast, newest first.
The address of the Model Viewer and Model Multi now follows what is on screen: the layer, Areas, isobars, temperature values, split screen and the rest. Bookmark it, or save it as a shortcut, and it opens the same view at the latest run. For a quick link to one parameter, add ?param=rain (or temp, cloud, wind) to the address.
Open PrecipitationThe Cloud layer now shows white cloud over a darker map, so it stands out clearly, and you can switch between Total, High, Mid and Low cloud to see which layer of the atmosphere the cloud is in. It works on every model on the Model Viewer and Model Multi.
Open low cloud
Temperature on the Model Viewer is now drawn in 3 degree colour bands, and a new Anomaly layer shows how far each model's 2 m temperature is above or below the normal for that date and hour, against 1990 to 2019 (set to the Met Office's 1991 to 2020 averages over the UK), in blue to red bands. Turn on Show temperature values in the settings menu to print the numbers on the map. Tap Space to flip between temperature and anomaly, or hold it to peek. The Split screen switch on the bar shows temperature on the left and its anomaly on the right.
Open the anomaly
On shorter screens, such as a laptop, the controls and timeline now sit in one slim bar along the bottom of every map page, giving the map around 60% more room, with the map credits just above it. On the Model Viewer the run and valid times now live in the panel at the top right, so the strip across the top of the map is gone. Taller screens keep the floating player.
Open the Model Viewer
The Model Viewer and Model Multi now open on Overview, a single picture of a model's forecast: rain over the model's own cloud and 2 m temperature on shaded terrain, with isobars and high and low pressure centres on top. Temperature and Cloud are also maps in their own right, picked under Parameter, each with its own colour key. Rainfall rate and the accumulations are still under Precipitation.
Open the Model Viewer
Météo-France's AROME model is now on the Model Viewer and Model Multi. On a grid of about 1 km, it shows hourly rainfall rate and 1 to 48 hour totals out to 51 hours, with the same areas, readout and colours as every other model. It covers Ireland, Wales and England up to the Scottish border, and where it has no forecast the map says so rather than showing a partial figure.
Open AROME
A new Coastal Viewer, under Forecasts, maps wave forecasts from six models round the UK and Ireland, coloured on the same scale as the wave buoys page: wave height, wave period, and swell and wind sea where a model splits them, with arrows showing which way the waves are heading and isobars where the model's own centre provides them. Pick Sea level under Parameter for a storm surge forecast from the Met Office's shelf model.
Open the Coastal Viewer
All seven forecast models on the Model Viewer and Model Multi now show wind as well as rain: choose Wind under Parameter, then Wind speed or Gusts under Layer (gusts on every model that forecasts them). The map is coloured by Beaufort force, with arrows showing which way the wind is blowing, and a switch under the key reads it in Beaufort, mph or knots, with spot values in the same unit.
Open the Model Viewer
The homepage map, Radar & Sat and Satellite now show lightning from the Met Office's ground network by default, as rings coloured by age that stay on the map for an hour, so a storm's track is easy to follow. EUMETSAT's satellite lightning is still in each map's settings.
Open Radar & SatOn a phone, the key panel on the main map pages is now a slim title bar under the menu, which leaves more of the map showing. Folding the bottom panel, on any screen, keeps the play button, the time slider and the date, and hides the drop-downs, so you can still scrub the timeline.
On a phone the menu is now split into Warnings, Observations, Forecasts and Archive, matching the desktop menu, so you no longer scroll past every section to reach the one you want. It opens on the section for the page you are on.
A new map of the UK's wave buoys: wave height, wave period, the direction the waves are heading and sea temperature, every 30 minutes, with the last 48 hours of each buoy to scrub through. Readings are from Cefas WaveNet.
Open the wave buoysLightning on the homepage map and the radar can now come from the Met Office ATDnet ground network as well as EUMETSAT's satellite imager, which stays the default. Open the settings menu on the player and pick Lightning source.
Open the radarThanks to the reader who sent feedback about an error in the wind observations. It has been fixed.
Open the wind observationsA new map of every river level gauge the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and SEPA publish, updated every 15 minutes. Each gauge is judged against its own history, from low to exceptional, and each catchment is shaded by how its rivers are responding as a whole. Scrub back through the last two weeks, or open any gauge for its own page with its chart, thresholds and nearby gauges. The homepage now carries a River Levels card with the catchment map and the ten highest gauges.
Open the river level mapThe forecast against radar comparison map now works with every model: UKV, DMI Harmonie, ECMWF HRES and AIFS, GFS, NOAA AIGFS and Met Office Global. Open any area and choose Open full chart to see its rain over time on one large chart: what radar measured, and each forecast run starting from what had already fallen by its run time. Compare the latest runs of one model, or several models side by side, and share the view as a link. The full chart covers runs from 12 October onwards.
Every rain gauge map and table now has a Quality control switch. Turn it on and gauges that the rain gauge check judges likely faulty, such as blocked or stuck ones, are left out of the map, the lists and the totals, for whatever period you are looking at. A small note beside the switch says how many were left out. It is on by default, and you can turn it off.
Open the rain gauge mapTapping a rain gauge, a soil moisture site, a flood warning or anything else on a map used to open a box that could run under the controls at the bottom or the key at the top, especially on a laptop or a phone, leaving part of it out of reach. Every map popup now sizes itself to the space left clear, moves the map so the whole box is in view, and scrolls inside itself when there is more to show, with a fade at the bottom to say so.
A new page checks every rain gauge across Great Britain every 15 minutes against its neighbours, the radar and its own recent readings. The map shows rainfall as usual, and any gauge that has had a second look wears a ring: red for likely faulty, amber for uncertain, green for a real shower the neighbours missed. It also picks out blocked gauges that read nothing while it rains all around them. Open a gauge in the list to see why, with its readings beside the radar.
Open the rain gauge check
The Flood Forecasting Centre and the Met Office now share one impact matrix, so Flood Guidance Statements use new names: impact runs Minor, Moderate, Significant, Extreme (was Minimal, Minor, Significant, Severe) and likelihood Low, Medium, High, Very high. The colours and overall risk levels are unchanged, and the whole site, archive included, now uses the new names. Weather warnings are now labelled by their colour (Yellow, Amber, Red) rather than Moderate, Severe and Extreme, which are matrix words now.
Open the latest Flood Guidance StatementThe flood warnings map and the homepage now include SEPA's live flood warnings and alerts for Scotland, alongside England and Wales, and the Flood Warning Explorer maps all 346 of Scotland's flood warning and alert areas. Choose Scotland under Location to see it on its own, or scrub the chart to see what was in force earlier.
Open the flood warnings map
The model viewer and Model Multi now include DMI Harmonie, the Danish Meteorological Institute's 2 km model, for a second high-resolution view of showers and heavy rain beside UKV out to 2.5 days. Two machine-learned models join it: ECMWF AIFS out to 15 days and NOAA AIGFS out to 16, both with isobars, so each can be set against its traditional counterpart, ECMWF HRES and GFS.
Compare them in Model Multi
A new map of live UK weather observations: temperature, wind, pressure, humidity, visibility and cloud from SYNOP and METAR reports, with Met Office weather stations to switch on, and the last 48 hours to play back. The homepage has a top ten for any of them.
Open weather observations
On the flood warnings map, the location, flood source and severity controls now filter the warnings in force over time chart and the counts too. Picking England or Wales greys out the other country on the map.
Open flood warningsThe daily Flood Guidance Statement now appears across the site within about ten minutes of being issued, on the home page as well as the flood guidance page.
See today's statementPress the crosshair button under the zoom buttons on the radar, radar accumulation and model maps, then point at the map to read the rainfall at that exact spot, such as 7.6 mm/hr. On a phone a target appears in the middle of the map instead: move the map under it and the reading follows. On the side by side views, pointing at one map reads the same spot on every map. Exact values cover radar frames, accumulations and model runs from 27 September 2026 onwards; earlier ones show the colour band instead, such as 4 to 8 mm/hr.
Try it on the radar
The controls along the bottom of every map can now be tucked away with the tab on their top edge, leaving one line that says what the map is showing. Tap that line to bring them back. Handy on a phone.
Try it on the radarHow wet the ground already is at about 50 COSMOS-UK sites across the UK, updated daily, with the last two weeks of soil moisture and rainfall for each site. Wetter ground soaks up less of the next rain. Find it under Latest, in the new Situational Awareness section.
Open the soil moisture mapTap a gauge on the rain gauge map for a chart of hourly rainfall, with 15-minute detail a tap away and the wettest hour labelled. The controls along the bottom can now be tucked away to give the map more room, and a short guide shows how the time slider works.
Open the rain gauge mapA new page follows the latest briefing from start to finish: the gauges, radar, forecasts and flood guidance it reads, the maps it looks at, and the rules it writes to. It is linked from the foot of the briefing on the homepage.
Take a look behind the scenesSEPA rain gauges across Scotland now report every 15 minutes, the same detail already shown for Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales gauges. Short-duration rainfall totals (1h, 3h, 6h, 12h) for Scotland are more accurate as a result.
View the gauge tableThe feedback survey now opens with a 1 to 7 scale asking how helpful you find the site overall, before the other questions.
Open the surveyA Theme control at the bottom of every page, and in the phone menu, sets Auto, Light or Dark for the whole site and remembers it. Auto follows your device, as before.
Try it belowIf your phone or computer is set to dark mode, the radar, flood warnings, warning explorer and Met Office warnings pages now follow it, including a dark basemap. Easier on the eyes at three in the morning.
Open the radarThe link button beside Play copies a link to exactly the frame and view on screen, so you can send someone what you are looking at. On every player page the arrow keys now step through frames, Shift with an arrow jumps four, Home and End go to either end, and P or Space plays and pauses.
Open the radarZoom in on the radar and the frames are now drawn at twice the detail, with every 1 km radar cell kept. Hover over the map, or tap it on a phone, to read the rainfall rate at that point, and tick Smooth radar in the key panel if you would rather the cells blended than sat as squares.
Open the radarA short survey, four questions and about two minutes. It replaces the old feedback form, and what gets built from it will show up on this page.
Open the survey
Bigger changes to the site now appear in the top bar and on a dedicated updates page, so you can see what has changed since you last visited.
See all updatesThe 20km grid has no coastline or river in it, so it was hard to tell which square you were looking at. Catchment outlines are now drawn faintly underneath on every map that offers the grid.
Try it on the model viewer
The three map panes now stay pinned between the key and the player, so you can scrub through the forecast without scrolling away from the maps. Each pane carries its own model and run picker.
Open Model Multi
Model Multi puts UKV, ECMWF, GFS and Met Office Global on one screen, synced by valid time or scrubbed independently.
Open Model Multi
UKV, ECMWF HRES, GFS and Met Office Global now share a single page, with the model as a dropdown rather than four separate pages.
Open the model viewerFive questions, about two minutes. Every response gets read, and what comes out of it shows up on this page.
--
--
--
--
--
The address of the Model Viewer and Model Multi now follows what is on screen: the layer, Areas, isobars, temperature values, split screen and the rest. Bookmark it, or save it as a shortcut, and it opens the same view at the latest run. For a quick link to one parameter, add ?param=rain (or temp, cloud, wind) to the address.
Open PrecipitationThe Cloud layer now shows white cloud over a darker map, so it stands out clearly, and you can switch between Total, High, Mid and Low cloud to see which layer of the atmosphere the cloud is in. It works on every model on the Model Viewer and Model Multi.
Open low cloud
Temperature on the Model Viewer is now drawn in 3 degree colour bands, and a new Anomaly layer shows how far each model's 2 m temperature is above or below the normal for that date and hour, against 1990 to 2019 (set to the Met Office's 1991 to 2020 averages over the UK), in blue to red bands. Turn on Show temperature values in the settings menu to print the numbers on the map. Tap Space to flip between temperature and anomaly, or hold it to peek. The Split screen switch on the bar shows temperature on the left and its anomaly on the right.
Open the anomaly
This application brings together real-time data from multiple sources to help you stay informed about weather and flood conditions across the UK.
Important
This application is unofficial and provided for informational, research, and analysis purposes only. Uptime, data completeness, and real-time accuracy are not guaranteed.
To avoid over-reliance during active weather or flood events, do not make safety-critical decisions using this tool. For official warnings and instructions, consult the primary public services directly: