London's reservoirs have a heartbeat (and the drought you remember isn't the one that ran them driest)
37 years of daily reservoir readings, one chart at a time, and a small surprise hiding in the numbers everyone thinks they remember.
Series · 2 parts
London's reservoirs
How full London's reservoirs are through the year, and how they handled the hot summer of 2026.
I found 37 years of daily readings for London’s Lower Lee and Lower Thames reservoir groups and went looking for the summer of 2022, the drought everyone seemed to remember. The record surprised me: 1996 was drier.
The second post adds June and July 2026. The Lower Thames reached its lowest level for that date in 37 years, but it still wasn’t the fastest drawdown in the record.
A record-hot summer arrives: how London's reservoirs are taking it
Six weeks after the first reservoir post I added June and July 2026, the start of what the Met Office says may be the UK's warmest summer on...