Heavy rains battered Kingston and New Malden into Tuesday (August 25) and caused widespread flooding that disrupted transport links in the area.

A woman was forced to abandon her car near Raynes Park bus station in New Malden, while fire crews were sent out to help residents and road users caught in the floods.

A number of homes were flooded in the area, with London Fire Brigade (LFB) receiving around 15 calls in the space of a single hour on Monday evening (5.30-6.30pm).

"We attended around fifteen 999 calls between 17:30 and 18:30 yesterday.

"Some of the incidents included rain water flooding in to properties and cars becoming stuck in flood water," an LFB spokesperson told the Surrey Comet.

Meanwhile others were forced to divert their journeys Monday and Tuesday as the flood waters hit transport links and closed a number of roads including Kingsgate Road, the Wood Street underpass and a section of New Malden High Street.

"I was travelling home on the 131 bus towards Kingston while the weather took a turn for the worse," Ryan Gary Moody, who journeyed home at the height of Monday night's downpour, told the Surrey Comet.

"The bus terminated and we all had to find another way home as buses and cars would not be able to continue their journey past Raynes Park station," he added, sharing a video of a woman in the area who was forced to abandon her car after it became surrounded by the floodwaters underneath a bridge at Raynes Park.

"When the flood continued to rise on Kingston Road locals had to don wellies and direct traffic," Kingston resident Rachel said.

The global scientific community links the ongoing climate crisis to more frequent and more intense extreme weather events as the planet continues to heat up.

Heavier flooding in the UK is also expected by climate agencies in the coming years.

The UK Met Office recently pointed to the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark 2014 study:

"Extreme weather events have severe impacts on society and ecosystems in our current climate, and pose an increasing threat as climate changes," they said.

"There is evidence of a human contribution to changes in temperature extremes, heavy rainfall events, and an increase in extreme high sea levels in a number of regions."

LFB said earlier this month that they had experienced in August alone a higher volume of extreme weather event incidents including floods and wildfires and pointed to the climate crisis as the cause.

"Climate change is causing higher temperatures which usually means firefighters see an increase in grass fires. However, the extreme storms that follow a heatwave have also been causing severe flooding across the capital.

"London Fire Brigade crews have attended incidents across the capital throughout August as torrential downpours caused localised flooding.

"Last weekend, there was severe flooding in parts of London, including in Rainham where on Saturday night (15 August), in just two and a half hours the Brigade’s 999 Control Operators took more than 90 calls to flooding incidents," a spokesperson said.