Cuckmere River — monitoring and records

The monitoring network on this water

Hydrionis holds 1,870 values from 2 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.

Gauges

1,870

Values held

1939–2026

Record spans

Gauges on the Cuckmere River

2 monitoring points, positioned as the publisher records them.

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 Cuckmere River at Cowbeech

Each month's mean discharge as the publisher computed it, which shows the seasonal shape an annual mean flattens away. 1939–2026.

Show relevant events (4 events)Shading marks when something was recorded, not what caused the line.

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.

Event	Type	Period	Standing	Authority
The 1976 drought	Drought declaration	1975-05-01 – 1976-08-31	Documented record	Compiled record
Yorkshire drought	Drought declaration	1995-04-01 – 1996-03-31	Documented record	Compiled record
The 2022 drought	Drought declaration	2022-03-01 – 2022-10-31	Documented record	Compiled record
European drought	Drought declaration	2022-05-01 – 2022-10-31	Documented 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
Period	Cuckmere River at Cowbeech (m³/s)
1939	0.150
1940	0.151
1941	0.262
1942	0.177
1943	0.289
1944	0.109
1945	0.156
1946	0.158
1947	0.122
1948	0.095
1949	0.114
1950	0.100
1951	0.122
1952	0.122
1953	0.122
1954	0.118
1955	0.122
1956	0.121
1957	0.122
1958	0.122
1959	0.122
1960	0.122
1961	0.122
1962	0.122
1963	0.084
1964	0.121
1965	0.119
1966	0.122
1967	0.122
1968	0.620
1969	0.357
1970	0.548
1971	0.594
1972	0.258
1973	0.088
1974	0.254
1975	0.785
1976	0.102
1977	0.673
1978	0.455
1979	0.288
1980	0.453
1981	0.104
1982	0.431
1983	0.429
1984	0.829
1985	0.449
1986	1.04
1987	0.343
1988	1.13
1989	0.117
1990	0.489
1991	0.522
1992	0.105
1993	0.604
1994	0.936
1995	0.910
1996	0.289
1997	0.128
1998	0.800
1999	0.752
2000	0.299
2001	0.659
2002	0.365
2003	0.483
2004	0.575
2005	0.215
2006	0.171
2007	0.491
2008	0.610
2009	0.655
2010	0.649
2011	0.678
2012	0.270
2013	0.654
2014	1.42
2015	0.866
2016	1.30
2017	0.351
2018	0.502
2019	0.148
2020	0.489
2021	0.704
2022	0.360
2023	0.893
2024	0.611
2025	0.731
2026	1.02

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 exist	Measured
Period held	1939–2026
Completeness	100.0% of the periods in that span are held.
Continuity	Continuous: every year from 1939 to 2026 is held.
Last read from the publisher	2026-10-01
Redistribution	Permitted by the upstream licences
Commercial reuse	Permitted by the upstream licences. No Hydrionis access tier can widen this.
Methodology	How this was produced

Every gauge Hydrionis holds here

Gauges on the Cuckmere River and what each holds
Gauge	Measures	Values	Record
Cuckmere River at Cowbeech	mean river flow, mean monthly river flow	1,107	1939–2026
Cuckmere River at Sherman Bridge	mean river flow, mean monthly river flow	763	1959–2026

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.

What each gauge’s link to this water rests on
Gauge	Evidence	Established
Cuckmere River at Cowbeech	Stated by the publisher — Environment Agency hydrology station register, riverName field — https://environment.data.gov.uk/hydrology/id/stations	2026-10-02
Cuckmere River at Sherman Bridge	Stated by the publisher — Environment Agency hydrology station register, riverName field — https://environment.data.gov.uk/hydrology/id/stations	2026-10-02

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 3 of them, which makes it a full profile.

Information-gain signals held for this water body
Signal	Held	Counts
Gauges holding a real record	2	no
Years spanned	88	yes, 20 or more
Values held	1,870	yes, 1000 or more
Distinct measurements	2	yes, 2 or more
Publishers measuring it	1	no
Official identifiers	0	recorded, not counted

Use this data

Machine-readable JSON /api/v1/observations/by-subject/gauge-ea-2231adf7-22c8-4290-af00-a97b688a4574.json
How to cite this, and who you must credit
How these figures were produced
Request this at a different scale, format or geography

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.

Environment Agency — Open Government Licence v3.0 (licence text)

Suggested citation for Hydrionis

Hydrionis (2026), Cuckmere River gauge records, accessed 2026-10-05, hydrionis.com/waters/england-cuckmere-river/

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 Cuckmere River 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 confidence2025

Source: EA — Hydrology Data Explorer API, EA measure 2231adf7-22c8-4290-af00-a97b688a4574-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 1 October 2026.