Clear the yard gully before Friday’s rain, while the path is still dry

Monday’s walk is short because Friday’s detail is still moving. Matt Taylor’s BBC Weather piece, published on 19 October 2026, said most computer models take the centre of the low across the south of the UK, with the highest risk of disruptive winds over the southernmost parts of England and Wales and possibly some eastern coastal counties later on Friday. Some runs take a more northerly track, which would spread gales into Scotland and Northern Ireland as well. A still more southerly track would hit France harder than the UK. Taylor wrote that if the Met Office or Met Éireann name the system for significant impacts, the name would be Storm Austen, and that Météo-France could name a more southerly system Storm Bruna. The Met Office storm centre lists Austen first for the 2026–27 season. Naming follows an expectation of amber or red impacts. Until a warning names your postcode, treat Friday as possible heavy rain and wind, and do the grate while the path is quiet.

The Met Office national forecast updated on the morning of 19 October said the week would be unsettled, with spells of heavy rain. Thursday and Friday were the days it flagged for possible gales and heavy rain, with temperatures around average and a chilly feel. Tonight can still bring local grass frost where skies clear. That frost is the outdoor-tap check and, if the white pipe outside the boiler is exposed, the condensate-pipe check. It does not empty a grate full of leaves.

What a dry October changes about Friday’s rain

A dry autumn and a flooded path can arrive in the same week. BBC Weather said rainfall has stayed short across a huge stretch of England and Wales, and that parts of Herefordshire had seen only a tenth of the October rain usually recorded by this point. On 15 October 2026 the government declared severe drought in parts of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Somerset, East Sussex and West Sussex, after the driest April to September in over a century in the South East and South West. Customer supplies were described as uninterrupted. The instruction beside that declaration was to use water wisely.

The Environment Agency’s drought report for 9 to 15 October, updated on 16 October and written for England, said October as a whole was still much drier than normal. National reservoir storage was 54% of capacity, about 21% below the long-term average for the time of year. The report said further significant rainfall is needed before water resources return to normal for many companies. It also recorded Yorkshire moving into drought status on 9 October, and it split the country: parts of Wessex, Devon, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, Solent and South Downs, and Kent and South London were in severe drought; a long list from East Anglia through the Midlands and Thames to Yorkshire was in drought; North East England, Cumbria and Lancashire, and Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire were in prolonged dry weather. Those labels are about rivers, groundwater and reservoirs. They are updated. Read the live report if you need this week’s status for a business or a farm.

For a house, the useful split is simpler. Rain that the reservoirs still need can still sit on your slabs if the grate is buried. Hard paving does not become a soakaway because the summer was hot. A flower pot, a doormat or a summer’s leaves over the outlet send the downpipe’s water sideways, along the mortar, and towards the door or the air brick. BBC Weather said all areas will see rain at times this week, including places in drought, and that the amounts depend on the track. A reader in Manchester, where the 16 October report’s label was prolonged dry weather, has the same grate job as a reader in Somerset. The label does not shovel the leaves.

Which grate you are allowed to touch

Ofwat’s note on public and private sewers says that since 1 October 2011, in the transfer of private sewers, a householder’s responsibility usually ends at the property boundary, where the drain meets the public sewer. The same page says local authorities are responsible for highways drainage, including gullies, on the roads they maintain, and that trunk roads and motorways in England sit with the body that maintains them. The page still uses the name Highways Agency for that trunk-road role. Citizens Advice puts the day-to-day version in one place: you are usually responsible for drains inside your boundary; you do not maintain a lateral drain outside that boundary, or a sewer you share with a neighbour, because the water company does. Some private or unadopted sewers remain, especially where one pipe serves a block of flats or a site of several homes. Those owners can be jointly responsible. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own water companies and roads authorities. The 2011 date on the Ofwat page is the England and Wales transfer. Ask locally before you treat a Glasgow or Belfast pipe as an English lateral.

Match the opening you can see from your own path to the person who deals with it. Stay off the carriageway while you decide.

A downpipe that lands on your side return, then runs under a neighbour’s path, needs a sentence on the phone call: where it enters your ground, and where it leaves it. Shared terraces often look like one grate and two owners. Say which shoe is yours. A plumber cannot guess the boundary from a photo of wet slabs, and this site does not pass the photo on.

What you can clear from the path today

Do this in daylight, on paving you can stand on without crossing flood water. The Met Office strong-wind advice says that once the wind is up you should stay indoors as much as possible, and that anyone who does go out should keep away from buildings and trees. Thursday and Friday are the wind risk in Monday’s outlook. Monday, and any dry gap on Tuesday, are the working window. If an amber or red warning is already up for your area, skip the walk.

1. Read the Met Office warning for your postcode, and the flood service for your nation if heavy rain is already in the text. An alert, a warning and a severe flood warning are different instructions. The England page is Check for flooding. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland publish their own.
2. Walk to each downpipe shoe. Move the pot, the bin, the doormat or the bag of compost that has sat on the grate since summer. Those objects are the blockage you can see without tools.
3. If the grate lifts with one gloved hand, lift it, pull out leaves and silt you can reach without putting your arm down the pot, and seat the grate again before you do anything else. An open hole on a path is the hazard you have just created.
4. If the grate is seized, cracked, or rocking, leave it. Note which elevation it is on: front left, side return, rear valley. That note is the call, later, if Friday’s water sits there.
5. Pour one bucket of water into the grate. The Environment Agency report said temporary use bans were in place across the companies using them, with no change during 9 to 15 October. Check your own supplier before you attach a hose. A bucket refills the trap under a gully that has dried out in a long dry spell. If the water drops away, the pot is taking it. If it sits, the blockage is below what your hand should chase.
6. From the same spot, look at the slope. A path that falls back to the door or the air brick will still deliver water to the house after the grate is clear. Leave the slabs where they are. A new fall is a builder’s job when the weather has passed, and it can be building work. The building regulations note is the question of approval. It is not a design for your threshold.
7. Put the grate back if you lifted it. Then deal with anything Friday’s wind can throw: bins, a loose cover, a trampoline. That list lives on the garden-before-wind page. Do not leave a bucket or a lifted grate as something the gust can move.

Skip drain chemicals. Skip a pressure washer. Both can push a joint apart or send filthy water back out of the pot onto the path. A dry trap that smells until the bucket refills it is ordinary on a combined drain after a long dry spell. A smell that remains once the trap holds water, or solids in the pot, means you stop. Wash your hands. Keep children and pets off that grate. Report what you saw rather than diluting it into the flower bed.

Tenants should tell the landlord or the agent what they found, and leave digging, jetting and new pipework to the person who owns the drain. Owner-occupiers on a private estate should read the transfer or the lease before they assume the 2011 boundary applies to a shared run. Neither of you needs an account on this site to look up a plumber after the fact.

When the walk stops

Some findings end the checklist. Put the gloves down.

• Sewage is visible, or the smell stays after the trap has water in it. Keep people away. Ask the water company whether the pipe is public. If they say the blockage is on your private drain, that call is a plumber, from a dry path.
• You would have to lift a manhole. Leave the cover seated. A public sewer surcharge is the water company’s job. A private chamber is still a plumber’s job, not a crowbar job in the rain.
• The only blocked opening is the road gully. Report it to the highway authority for that road. On a motorway or a trunk road, use the body that maintains that road. Do not shovel the kerb from the carriageway.
• Water is at the door, in the air brick, or coming up a downstairs loo. Move to the water-at-the-door guide and follow the live flood warning. Clearing a grate from inside a puddle is how a simple leaf job becomes a fall.
• You smell gas. Leave the house, avoid switches, and call the National Gas Emergency line on 0800 111 999. A gully check can wait.
• The paving is already under moving water, or an amber wind warning is in force. The Met Office advice for strong wind is to be indoors, away from the walls and the trees. Friday is the wrong time to prove the grate lifts.

Tiles on the lawn, a wet loft, or a ridge that looks lifted belong on the ground-level roof check and, if water is already coming through a ceiling, on the roof-leak page. Friday’s wind can move a loose tile. It does not make a ladder safe. Photograph the roof from the street if you want a record, and keep the phone call for a roofer when water is entering or a piece has already come down.

If Friday’s rain still sits on the slabs

A clear grate that still floods tells you the next fact. Watch for a minute from the doorway. You are separating a leaf job you have already finished from a pipe, a slope, or a road drain.

If your grate was clear, a bucket drained on Monday, and Friday’s water still ponds only on your side of the boundary, the slope of the patio or a blockage further down your private drain is the likely cause. A plumber is the right call for a drain that will not take water. A builder is the right call when the drain runs and the slabs still fall towards the house. Say which of those two you watched. Ask the plumber whether the figure covers a private drain inside the boundary, and whether it is plus VAT. Ask the builder what would need building regulations approval before anyone lifts the paving. City lists such as plumbing in Manchester and plumbing in Bristol are where the phone numbers sit. Building is the other list when the levels are the problem. You place the call.

If the street gully is also full, and the road is holding water, tell the highway authority and read the flood warning before you phone a plumber about your grate. A private drain cannot empty a surcharged road. If a downstairs pan is filling while nobody is running a tap, that is the sewer, and the water-at-the-door page is the one that splits a public sewer from a private drain. Pumping into a road gully, a sewer or a ditch has its own permissions. That page points at them. This one stops at the grate.

If the grate gulps the water and the wall above it is still streaming, you are looking at the trough or the shoe, which is the gutter guide. If the ceiling is the wet part, you are looking at the roof. Mixing those calls wastes the first dry hour after the rain, because the person who arrives is holding the wrong tools.

Photograph the waterline, the grate and the street from a dry doorway if you want something to show an insurer. The policy wording decides what is covered. This page does not. The cost notes are where pounds for building and roofing work are discussed. They are not a price for lifting a grate, and they are not a call-out fee.

What to say when you do ring

On a plumbing call, say which downpipe, whether the grate lifted, whether Monday’s bucket drained, and whether the smell cleared when the trap refilled. Say if the road gully was full at the same time. Ask whether the person covers blockages on private drains inside the boundary, and whether the first figure is plus VAT. For a house in London the list is plumbing in London; other cities use the same pattern under plumbing and heating. Use the number on the card.

On a building call, say how the path slopes, how often the door has taken water, and that the grate itself was clear. Ask what approval the job needs before anyone breaks out the slabs. On a highways report, give the road name and say the blocked opening is in the kerb, so the council is not sent to a private side return. On a water-company call, say whether sewage showed in the pot or only in the house.

The contact-details page shows how to reach a business yourself. Nobody here forwards the job, and nobody here can tell you the low has been named or that the warning has been lifted. Those sentences sit on the Met Office warning and on the flood service for your nation.

Questions that change the call

Is the grate under my downpipe my job?

Usually, if it sits inside your boundary and serves only your house. Ofwat dates the usual handover to the public sewer at the boundary, from 1 October 2011, for the England and Wales transfer. Citizens Advice agrees that drains inside the boundary are normally yours, and that a lateral drain beyond the boundary is the sewerage company’s. A kerb gully is the highway authority. A pipe that serves a block of flats may still be private and shared. If the house is in Scotland or Northern Ireland, ask the water company there before you use the English boundary.

Can I use a hosepipe to see if it drains?

Use a bucket unless your supplier confirms that a temporary use ban does not cover the hose. The Environment Agency’s England report, updated on 16 October 2026, said bans were in place and unchanged in the week of 9 to 15 October. One bucket shows whether the pot empties and puts the seal back in a trap that dried out over summer. A hose down the drive, and a pressure washer, are outside this check.

Does a dry autumn mean the rain will soak away?

The drought declarations describe reservoirs, rivers and groundwater. They do not describe your grate. Severe drought, declared on 15 October for parts of six southern counties, can sit in the same week as heavy rain on paving. If the water has already reached the door, leave this list and open the water-at-the-door guide.