HydrionisGlobal Water Intelligence
River

Bow Brook

10 monitoring stations on this water in England, holding 2,300 values between 1969 and 2026. A named watercourse. The gauges below sit on it, at points its publisher records.

EnglandRiver

The monitoring network on this water

Hydrionis holds 2,300 values from 10 gauges on this water. Discharge is a property of a gauge and its reach, not of this water as a whole, so this page reports the network and its records rather than a single figure.

10
Gauges
2,300
Values held
1969–2026
Record spans
Gauges on the Bow Brook
10 monitoring points, positioned as the publisher records them.
Gauges on the Bow BrookBOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, BOW BROOK, Bow Brook at Besford BridgeBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBOW BROOKBow Brook at Besford Bridge

The seasonal shape

An annual mean says how much water a river carried. A monthly record says when — and on most rivers the difference between a wet winter and a dry summer is larger than the difference between one year and the next.

Monthly mean flow at Bow Brook at Besford Bridge
Each month's mean discharge as the publisher computed it, which shows the seasonal shape an annual mean flattens away. 1969–2026.
Shading marks when something was recorded, not what caused the line.
Monthly mean flow at Bow Brook at Besford BridgeMonthly mean flow at Bow Brook at Besford Bridge: Bow Brook at Besford Bridge in m³/s, from 1969 to 2026.The 1976 droughtYorkshire droughtThe 2022 droughtEuropean drought051015m³/s19691980198719942001200820152023

Taken as the publisher computes it rather than recomputed by Hydrionis from daily values: the publisher knows which of its readings passed validation. Months the gauge did not cover are absent rather than interpolated, and the line breaks where they fall.

What the shaded periods are (4 events)

A shaded period marks when something was recorded, not what caused the shape of the line. Where the two coincide, they coincided.

Documented record — A documented event, compiled from cited sources after it happened. The dates are as good as the record, which for older events can mean the month rather than the day.

EventTypePeriodStandingAuthority
The 1976 droughtDrought declaration1975-05-01 – 1976-08-31Documented record
Compiled record
Yorkshire droughtDrought declaration1995-04-01 – 1996-03-31Documented record
Compiled record
The 2022 droughtDrought declaration2022-03-01 – 2022-10-31Documented record
Compiled record
European droughtDrought declaration2022-05-01 – 2022-10-31Documented record
Compiled record

Not shown on this chart

  • Cantareira water crisis, São Paulo — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
  • Cape Town Day Zero — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
  • Hurricane Katrina water and sanitation collapse — This event’s area does not contain this chart’s subject. Sharing a country is not sharing an event, so it is not drawn.
View the data behind this chart
Underlying data
PeriodBow Brook at Besford Bridge (m³/s)
19690.315
19702.83
19710.664
19723.62
19730.630
19782.58
19791.33
19801.52
19810.937
19823.26
19831.45
19842.54
19851.77
19863.82
19871.70
19884.93
19890.385
19902.60
19912.04
19921.10
19932.78
19942.86
19953.55
19961.55
19970.186
19983.58
19994.52
20001.19
20012.79
20021.13
20033.10
20041.44
20050.571
20060.676
20073.95
20084.81
20093.08
20104.36
20112.73
20120.443
20133.70
20149.53
20153.10
20165.45
20171.99
20185.69
20190.506
20202.71
20215.88
20233.35
20243.11
20255.16
20266.88

About this series

Everything below is a property of the data rather than a rating of it. There is deliberately no single confidence score: how much a gap matters depends on what you are about to do with the series, and only you know that.

Source
Environment Agency — Hydrology Data Explorer API · Open Government Licence v3.0
How the values came to existMeasured
Period held1969–2026
Completeness91.4% of the periods in that span are held. Gaps are drawn as breaks and never interpolated.
Known gaps
  • 2 separate periods inside 1969–2026 hold no value. The longest runs from 1974 to 1977 — 4 years with no reading. They are drawn as breaks in the line and are never interpolated across.
ContinuityThe record begins in 1969 and is not continuous from it: 58 years separate the first value from the last, and 91% of the years between them are held. The span is not the record.
Last read from the publisher2026-08-24
RedistributionPermitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reusePermitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
MethodologyHow this was produced

Every gauge Hydrionis holds here

GaugeMeasuresValuesRecord
Bow Brook at Besford Bridgemean river flow, mean monthly river flow6001969–2026
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa2251989–2015
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa2151989–2015
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa2101989–2015
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa2052002–2021
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa1801989–2014
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa1751989–2008
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa1701989–2007
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa1601989–2014
BOW BROOKept family richness, life flow index (family level), proportion of sediment-sensitive invertebrates, whpt average score per taxon, whpt number of scoring taxa1601994–2021

How these gauges were attached to this water

Named by the publisher Each gauge here names this water in the publisher’s own station record. Hydrionis has not inferred the connection from station names.

GaugeEvidenceEstablished
Bow Brook at Besford BridgeStated by the publisher — Environment Agency hydrology station register, riverName field — https://environment.data.gov.uk/hydrology/id/stations2026-08-26
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations
BOW BROOKStated by the publisher on the record this gauge’s observations came from.With the observations

What this record holds

Hydrionis decides which waters get a page, and which of those are offered to search, from what is actually held rather than from how the page reads. Five signals are counted; this record has 5 of them, which makes it a full profile.

SignalHeldCounts
Gauges holding a real record10yes, 3 or more
Years spanned58yes, 20 or more
Values held2,300yes, 1000 or more
Distinct measurements7yes, 2 or more
Publishers measuring it2yes, 2 or more
Official identifiers1recorded, not counted

Use this data

Use this data

No bulk download is offered here, which is a licence position rather than a product one: at least one contributing publisher does not permit redistribution. The values can be read on the page, cited, and pointed to at source.

Attribution and citation

Attribution you are required to give

These are conditions of the licences the underlying data is published under. They are obligations to the publishers, not to Hydrionis, and they apply to you directly whether or not you mention Hydrionis at all.

Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Suggested citation for Hydrionis

Hydrionis (2026), Bow Brook gauge records, accessed 2026-09-02, hydrionis.com/waters/england-bow-brook/

Cite Hydrionis where you rely on the compilation, the normalisation, the eligibility judgements or a chart. Where you use an unmodified published value, the publisher’s attribution is the one that is required; crediting Hydrionis as well is welcome and is not something Hydrionis can require of you.

Recommended, not required. Hydrionis does not claim rights over unmodified public data it relayed, and doing arithmetic on somebody else’s measurements does not make them Hydrionis’s. Cite the version and the access date: the Bow Brook gauge records changes as publishers release and as methods are revised, and a citation without both cannot be checked later. Full guidance is on cite and reuse.

Where these figures come from

Spatially aggregatedHigh confidence2020

Source: EA — Hydrology Data Explorer API, EA measure df197117-d3ba-4706-b6f5-a7c773ebab31-flow-m-86400-m3s-qualified. Licence: Open — attribution required (attribution required).

Method: Mean of the twelve monthly means for the year. Computed from months rather than from daily readings directly, so that a year with uneven observation is not weighted toward its best-observed months. Years with any month missing are not published.

Aggregated by Hydrionis from daily mean flow published by the Environment Agency under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

Retrieved 24 August 2026.

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