Choose the service for your part of the UK
If you need current flood information for a place in England, use the Environment Agency's Check for flooding service and search by town, city or postcode. Its coverage and warning status are specific to England. For Wales, Natural Resources Wales provides a separate warning service. In Scotland, consult SEPA's live flood updates. Do not assume that a warning absent from one country's service means another part of the UK has no risk.
The Met Office flood-warning guide explains the warning types and links their role to weather information. A weather warning describes expected weather impacts over an area; a flood warning concerns flooding in a specified area. Neither should be converted into a precise flooded-street boundary by looking at a broad map marker.
Where a global event map helps—and where it does not
The PocketWorld flood tracker guide introduces global event observations with source and freshness context. Such a map can help you discover a reported event or explore regional patterns. It is not a comprehensive list of every UK river level, drainage issue or warning area, and its marker may be a summary of a wider event. An empty local view cannot rule out surface-water flooding or rapidly changing conditions.
Provider updates also happen on different schedules. A newly issued local warning may not appear as a global event marker. A marker can remain after a local warning changes or is withdrawn. Before comparing the two, note the event time, the map retrieval time and the official warning's last update. Avoid presenting an old screenshot as if it were a current warning.
A straightforward checking sequence
First determine whether the address is in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland. Open the appropriate local flood or emergency information service; for Northern Ireland, nidirect's flooding guide explains local risk, reporting and response, rather than sending readers to an England-only postcode search. Next read the relevant Met Office weather warning if heavy rain or coastal weather is involved. Finally, use PocketWorld for broader context and follow the provider link on any event that interests you.
When sharing information, name the issuing agency and the exact area it describes. A postcode result, a county-scale weather warning and a global event marker have different spatial meanings. If you cannot determine the valid time or area of a map layer, state that uncertainty rather than inferring an exact risk boundary.
Not an emergency decision tool
This guide does not assess whether a particular home or road is safe. Follow the current instructions from the responsible authority and emergency services. PocketWorld does not issue flood alerts and may serve retained data during upstream outages. Read our methodology to understand why an informational map and an official warning service can disagree without either being a complete picture.
Data sources
References are linked beside the explanations above. This evergreen guide does not report current incidents.