Thames Region experienced a wetter-than-average May and June with the majority of the rain falling on 19 and 20 July. There were over 4,000 properties flooded and over half of these were flooded because of surface water (rather than a river breaking its banks).
The extremely high rainfall and wet ground overwhelmed the drains and led to significant surface water flooding. Worst-affected areas were Thatcham, Newbury, Maidenhead and parts of London.
The majority of the properties flooded from the river were in Oxfordshire and West Berkshire (which flooded from the River Thames and its tributaries). The scale of this event on the River Thames has been compared to the 1947 floods across the upper Thames, and to the January 2003 floods in Oxford. Record river levels were seen on some of the Thames’ tributaries, such as the Rivers Evenlode, Windrush, Ock and Loddon. However this was not the case in Reading and other towns downstream where they experienced river levels that were much less severe than in 1947 and 2003. As a result there was minimal flooding from the lower River Thames and its tributaries.
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