Loading River & drought watch…
How the River Wensum is flowing compared with normal for the time of year — a live Environment Agency signal, with the official hosepipe/restriction status alongside.
Loading the latest information…
Town Tools builds free, public tools for Norwich and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.
How much water is moving down the River Wensum — the chalk stream that runs straight through Norwich — compared with normal for the time of year. It is a plain signal of how dry things are getting. The official word on any hosepipe ban comes from Anglian Water, linked below.
1.22 m³/s
The Wensum is running low for the time of year. Rising over the past couple of weeks. Daily mean for Saturday 22 August.
Around the 13th percentile of August flows on record. That is about 62% of the normal August flow.
The official word
This page describes the river day to day. The official drought status and any hosepipe ban are decided elsewhere — check here:
The Wensum is a rare chalk stream and Norwich's own river. Norfolk is the driest county in one of the driest regions of the UK, and the same chalk that feeds the river also supplies much of the area's drinking water — so when it runs low it matters for both the wildlife the river is famous for and the supply.
In its last drought briefing, covering late February to late March 2026, the Environment Agency moved the Norfolk, Norwich and the Broads area back to normal status, with no customer water restrictions in place. This page shows how the river is flowing day to day; the official drought status and any hosepipe ban are decided by the Environment Agency and Anglian Water, not here.
Updated . River data from the Environment Agency Hydrology API, under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Daily means may be revised.
Wensum: 1.22 m³/s
low for the time of year