Floodwaters blocked roads and threatened to disrupt homes and businesses in Kingston town centre on Monday evening (August 24) after heavy rainfall during the day.

Images and videos posted to social media showed heavy rains through Monday afternoon and floodwaters washing over roads in the town centre.

Flooded streets included the low-lying underpass at Kingston Bridge and on Eden Street with traffic delays reported in the area.

Kingsgate Road and Woodstreet underpass were meanwhile closed by police. 

The flooding arrived as the Met Office issued nationwide warnings ahead of the arrival of Storm Francis on Tuesday.

"A deep area of low pressure will bring heavy rain and the risk of severe gales in places during Tuesday and Wednesday," a Met Office spokesperson warned Monday afternoon.

Scientists link the current climate crisis to more frequent and more intense storms and flooding in the UK and countries around the world as the planet heats up.

"Within the scientific community it’s a relatively well-accepted fact that as global temperatures increase, extreme precipitation (rainfall) will very likely increase as well," Joao Teixeira, co-director of the Center for Climate Sciences at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said earlier this year.