Surges are water movements caused by meteorological effects such as winds and atmospheric pressure changes – they are not easily predictable and require powerful computers and sophisticated software to predict just 36 hours in advance.

What are storm surges?

A storm surge is a large scale increase in sea level due to a storm. Low atmospheric pressure allows sea level to rise, and gale force winds combined with the Earth’s rotation force water towards the coastline – More about surges →

Storm surge model

The National Oceanography Centre Liverpool develops and maintains tide-surge models used for forecasting storm surges on the coasts of England and Wales for the Environment Agency – More about the surge model →

View the latest forecasts

The latest surge forecasts for the next 48 hours from the National Oceanography Centre's storm surge model run at the Met Office, can be viewed here – More about surge forecasts →

Archived surge model outputs

Forecasts and archived forecasts are given for 35 coastal sites around the UK coastline – More about archived model outputs →

Skew surges

A skew surge is the difference between the maximum observed sea level and the maximum predicted tide regardless of their timing during the tidal cycle – More about skew surges →