What stays on your device
Starred paths are saved in your browser’s local storage and never sent to us. The “Near me” sort on the paths page uses your browser’s location to compute distances on your device — your location is not transmitted to our servers or stored anywhere.
What we store
Path reports. When you send a “Been down today?” report we store what you told us — passable or flooded, how you crossed, any note — with the time and the river level at that moment. Reports are anonymous: no name, account or network address is attached to them. They are shown publicly on the path’s page and used to tune that path’s flood line.
Path suggestions. A suggested path stores the line you drew, your description, and — only if you choose to give them — a name and email address so we can follow up. The email is never published.
Rate limiting. To keep spam out, report and suggestion submissions are counted per network address in short-lived counters that expire automatically within 24 hours. These counters are not joined to the content you submit.
Analytics and third parties
We use Vercel Analytics to count page views. It is cookie-free and does not track you across sites. The site is hosted on Vercel, with data stored on Neon (database) and Upstash (rate-limit counters); like any web host, these providers process requests on our behalf. Web fonts load from Fontshare, and the map on the suggest page loads tiles from OpenFreeMap — your browser requests those directly, as it does for any web resource. We set no advertising or tracking cookies.
Want a report or suggestion removed? Email hello@floodpath.co.uk with the path and the time it was posted, and we’ll take it down.
Terms of use
Flood Path is free to use and advisory only — it is not a safety-critical service. Statuses are estimates built from public river-gauge feeds and community reports; gauges pause, conditions change fast in heavy rain, and a gauge a mile away never tells the whole story. Always use your own judgement on the day, and never rely on this site where flooding could put you in danger.
River level data comes from the Environment Agency (used under the Open Government Licence v3.0) and Natural Resources Wales. We present it transparently and unmodified apart from the comparisons described on each path’s page.