Met office weather warnings for heavy rain, severe gales and snow

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

Going to be an eventful few days. Have been discussing it in te Christmas weather thread but I think they need highlighting. met office warnings

Cold and frosty here this am (slippery pavements) has rapidly warmed up and now very gusty winds picking up- rain hasn't started but I guess it will in a few hours.

The windows are rattling in sw london at the mo.

Where is everyone talkibg about it? In bed?!

Very gale-y (because that's a word!) here in the SW. Keeping me awake!

Very very blustery in Newark too!

SE.
10 degrees already this morning. What is going on?

torro have issued a tornado watch for today. also hail, c-g lightning.

In case you arent following the Christmas thread, I think this is important enough to be repeated:

To summarise the two main events I'm watching:

Storm 1 - Monday/Christmas Eve.
Monday is worst for the south, esp the SE - gusts to 70mph+ Then that night into Christmas Eve the main risk transfers to scotland/NI/north of England. The low is forecast to be at 930hPa - which is very deep. Christmas eve could see winds of 90mph in NI and parts of Scotland. Can I urge you to please keep an eye on the met office warnings and be prepared for powercuts and horrid disruption. Build the storm into your plans.

Storm 2 - Friday27th/Saturday 28th.
Clearly this storm is sometime off and hopefully the models will back down but again you should be aware of it as GFS is showing it very consistently - unusual for the time frame. GFS shows it as a 940hPa storm and takes it right over the country - at this point in time it is impossible to say where the worst of it will be but at present I'm hazarding a guess at the west country followed by the east midlands. That will change.

Interestingly although the UKMO also develops the storm, ECMWF really doesnt seem that impressed with it this model run, though it was picking up on it very much so in previous runs. It may be the first to pick up a down grade, or it may be a dodgy run. Time will tell.

Forecast remains as before with two potentially damaging storms coming up. No change in the 12z GFS for though on monday there is now a tighter gradient showing in NW England. met office warnings now covering almost all of Britain, warning of gusts to 90mph in some places but more widespread gusts of 70mph across the country. As I said earlier, please please do build the storm into your plans when considering travel. I'm off out in a bit but will be able to answer specific questions when i get back.

updated met office warnings

They are not kidding! . Why do all of my children need me to be taxi at different times over the next three hours? It's foul out there.

Oh no! DD1 and her friend are due to be riding outdoors in an event on the 27th and she has been looking forward to it all year.Last year dpony went lame so she missed out then.Hope the storm fizzles out over the next few days.

unfortunately the 12Z ECMWF echos the GFS with regard to Monday/tuesday, but fortunately its still not so keen on the storm of the 27th. Fingers crossed its on to something.

Marking place. Have convinced my parents to travel up tomorrow from Essex to Derbyshire instead of Monday. No doubt everyone will have the same idea and there will be gridlock.

That is really sensible Snakey.

Looking bad Tuesday morning in the SE now as well as Monday afternoon/evening.

My parents are planning to drive from Devon to Essex on Tues (CE), they can't really come any earlier and obv don't want to leave it later.

How bad are things really going to be do you think?

They left here early in Oct cos of the forecast looking so bad and it was fine so I don't want to mess with their plans again.

Fortunately as timings stand things should be hopefully easing by the afternoon, but I think that away from the coast they will be seeing gusts of 60mph or so.

And that's the issue really isn't it, because even in a bad storm not everywhere gets hit equally. In the oct storm locally we saw a fair few trees come down, lost power for a few hours and yet other areas not far away weren't affected to the same extent. Other areas were worse and without power for days and several people were killed. So people think 'oh it was fine for us for the last warning, it will be fine again' and it may well be, depending on the exact path of the storm and any localised squalls, but you just don't know until it happens.

We were looking at train midday on tuesday london to ipswich but may bring it foward to early morning. Cant do it earlier due to work

Exactly - there was some serious impact from that storm but the path from us to their house was unscathed. And my DDad took the advice to drive carefully rather too seriously and crawled his way down to Devon - my DSis was in the car for a lift and was texting me fuming in the backseat!

bbc have a nice little weather forecast on it.

Jks that made me giggle.

Ethelb, I obviously can't predict what will happen with the trains, but from a weather point of view Tuesday morning looks to be worse than Tuesday afternoon.

national rail are warning of potential disruption Monday.

We have just got home from staying on Dublin for a couple of days. A fairly bumpy ride home, & we were delayed for a couple of hours due to the weather.

My mum & dad are travelling up from Suffolk to us (midlands) on Christmas Eve. Hopefully they'll leave it until after lunch.

You're right about the localisation of storms (as you know anyway!), but I was surprised driving back from the airport how some areas looked as though they hadn't seen rain / high winds & others were flooded etc.

Anyway off for a brandy to settle my nerves after that flight!

18z GFS is now out.
Still a 930hPa low. Looks pretty similar, perhaps not quite so windy on Tuesday for the south but Monday in the south and through the night still looks severe and also northern Scotland still looks severe on Tuesday. High winds everywhere and even in the midlands still gusting to 60mph or so.

Glad you made it back ok crumpled :)

Thanks for the updates. Travelling from Wales to Devon on Tuesday. Is this likely to be a problem?

Thank you .
I hope everyone has safe, uneventful journeys over the next few days.

I have to say I was following this thread & the links in the airport, & breathed a sigh of relief when they announced the delay!

If things don't change it could be cat. At the moment I'd plan to try and leave it later in the day if you can. I will be updating tomorrow with any changes but of course the met office are the real experts so keep a close eye on their website.