Although the focus here is on the floods of 1983, there were four other AWF events at Middleton in the record period from 1982 to 2014 during which the water level rose by more than 1 m in 15 min (Table 1). Three of these occurred at the same time as AWF events on the South Tyne with which the Tees shares headwater sources on the Cross Fell massif. On 20 July 2002, a recording raingauge at Alston on the South Tyne recorded 26.2 mm in the first 15 min of the storm. At Middleton on the Tees, the water rose 1.12 m (76.3 m³/s) in 15 min, while on the Tyne, the AWF persisted to the lowest gauging station at Bywell with a catchment area of over 2,000 km² (Archer & Fowler 2018). Similarly, AWF events were experienced on the Tees and South Tyne on 9 August 2004 and 20 July 2007. On both occasions, thunderstorms were widespread and properties were flooded from surface water following intense rainfall. In addition, on 20 July 2007, the overflow of tributaries caused flooding in Alston, Haltwhistle and Bardon Mill and overwhelmed and nearly drowned a fisherman standing on a flood bank at the river's edge on the lower South Tyne (Archer & Fowler 2022). Flash flood hydrographs for the South Tyne are shown in The Chronology (Northeast region). On 4 August 1994, storms were more dispersed but a remarkable AWF also occurred on the lowland River Wansbeck (Archer 1994; Archer et al. 2016).