More severe gales expected in the UK this week.
A slow moving area of high pressure which brought settled weather to the UK last week has moved away, leaving us with a period of very unsettled weather courtesy of a series of Atlantic depressions powered by a powerful jet stream.
This weekend has already seen very strong winds and heavy rain hit Northern parts of the UK, causing travel disruptions, but many forecasters believe that there is worse to come. This coming week is likely to see several low pressure systems bring gales and heavy rain to UK, but it's not possible at this point to predict quite how severe these storms will be or exactly which areas will be affected.
There is potential for some quite severe weather, and a low pressure system expected to hit Central and Southern parts of the UK on Thursday has been named 'Storm Emily' by Leon Brown from The Weather Channel, after Emily Bronte who died 65 years ago on Thursday. These low pressure systems could continue to affect us right up until Christmas.
Update: There has now been a Yellow weather warning of wind issued for Northern Ireland and Scotland on Thursday morning. It seems that the low pressure system causing this storm will track North West of the UK, causing high winds and heavy rain in Northern Ireland and Scotland. As yet there are no warnings in place for the South of England. More.
You will probably hear a lot about the coming weather as many newspapers have picked up on it and given it their usual hype. My favourite is the headline from the Express... 'Freak storm to batter Britain: 100mph winds and downpours to cause chaos'. In their article, The Express say 'Torrential rain and 100mph gales are expected to topple trees, bring down power lines and damage buildings'.
There's no doubt, the UK has seen some severe weather in recent weeks. At the end of October we had St. Jude storm, which brought high winds to Southern England, causing severe travel disruption and damage to trees and property. Then just over a week ago we had storm Xaver which brought high winds to Scotland and then a tidal surge that caused severe coastal flooding in Wales and the East coast of England. Now this weekend Scotland and the north of England have been hit by hight winds which have cause some travel disruption. But at the moment there are no weather warnings beyond Sunday evening and there is no certainty how severe the weather caused by the coming series of low pressure systems will be. The timing, course and severity of these weather systems could change before they hit our coastlines.
It is likely to be a week of unsettled weather for many of us, and as always, we will bring you regular updates and weather warnings as the picture becomes clearer. Visit our Facebook page and click the 'Like' button to get regular updates on Facebook.