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

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

You are welcome :)

[upjacobscreekwithoutapaddle]

OYMLK...driving from Herts to Somerset on Monday. Its gonna be hell isn't it?

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

It doesn't look great as with the others I think leaving as early as possible is best and plan your route carefully.

[upjacobscreekwithoutapaddle]

Thanks muchly. Merry Christmas to you.

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

And to you

[HesterShaw]

We're going from Cornwall right to the east coast on Tuesday morning. I can hardly wait....

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

That will be fun Hester!

[HesterShaw]

It was going to be Monday but I couldn't face the drive through the storm. But it looks like it's going to be Monday AND Tuesday. And when I get there, it's Christmas at the in laws. Oh God...

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

Well at least it's one less day now!

Am going to stop updating for the night, back tomorrow :)

[Whatevertheweather]

Oh crumbs we are off to Longleat Center Parcs on Monday for the week

[youarewinning]

South Coast Hampshire here. Calling in with reports of thunder and lightening and a massive wall of wind and rain that passed through and woke me up! Hence my posting early on a Sunday morning!

[ajandjjmum]

Happy Christmas Kitten!

Just wondering if I could pick your brains (again!). 3 am Monday morning in Warwick and 7 am Monday morning in Milton Keynes. Is it going to be absolutely rubbish?!!!!

Thanks you.

[PseudoSanta]

We are flying london to belfast early on the 28th - I hope that storm doesn't develop :(

[Cat98]

Thank you :)

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

Morning all, am mning from bed at the moment so I'm a bit limited in my ability to do long forecasts as every time I switch tabs todo the bit for the next day I lose what I've written! So I will attempt to cover the two storms and when I've got my lazy bum out of bed I'll do the rest of it!

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

Youarewinning I'm going to be interested in damage reports from that feature. It hit here too but just with lots of wind.

[Whatevertheweather]

I live just round the corner from youare and both my dd's were woken by the huge thunderstorm just after 6.30am. When I went in to get baby dd there was a flash of lightning so bright my sleep confused mind thought there was a photographer in her room! Wind and rain have died down now but we've lost another fence panel - 3 down this week grrrrr!

Praying it's not too windy at center parcs next week!

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

At the moment the low hasn't even become a closed off low pressure, but if you follow it through GFS it just 'bombs' going from 985hPa to 935hPa in 24 hours and then deepening to 930hPa.

My advice, which you should take very guardedly and checking with the met office site, remembering that overrules anything I say, and also remembering that things can change rapidly and unexpectedly in weather, so use your own common sense is (sorry about the really poor grammar!):

If you have to travel in the south then do so early tomorrow, the earlier the better or leave it if you can until later on Tuesday. If you are in the north, especially the NW and Scotland then it would be better to travel tomorrow weather wise. What happens on the roads and rail though I cannot forecast, weather is my thing!

[ajandjjmum]

I feel for you Kitten - we're all stressing over what we have to do for Christmas, and you've got that plus endless weather questions from Mumsnetters.

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

With regards to the 27th/28th all 3 main models are back to modelling it. It seems a little further north to me, taking the worst of the winds through the midlands. It's not good news, GFS has it as a 940hPa low and again rapidly deepening as it approaches. ECMWF isn't quite as developmental. So at the moment, it does look like there will be storm but its severity and position are yet to be pinned down.

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

Thank you AJ :) I reckon everyone is being really restrained. I don't mind as long as people accept that I do have to fit in other things too it will get tricky cHristmas day/boxing day as I'll be with family but I'll do my best to get out at least one update each day if the 27th/28th is still bad.

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

I'm reading some very worried posts about both storms from people who are normally pretty restrained forecasters.

One thing I've neglected to highlight is the very high rainfall totals for some, with a couple of inches over the two days possible in some areas. Surface flooding could start to become a real issue.

Apologies for repeating my posts in this and the Christmas weather thread, I seem to have different people following in each one and my thoughts apply equally to both threads.

[LadyFlumpalot]

If it helps, I've just called my dad, who lives in Devon, as I'm supposed to be driving from Dorset on Xmas Eve. My dad is a retired forecaster from the met office and he says to keep an eye on the warnings as they are likely to turn amber this afternoon, but at this stage it looks like the worst winds should clear the West by 6am Tuesday.

He has been known to be wrong!

[DameDeepRedBetty]

placemark. Thanks Kitten!

[OhYouMerryLittleKitten]

Lady, west of south England yes, not the west of Scotland or northern England though.

Usually the met office update their warnings about 11:30am. I think the reason we didnt go amber yesterday is the need to highlight specific areas with amber and pinning those areas down is more tricky as they have such specific criteria. (I'm guessing the south coast pretty far inland and north scotland, the north west and western coasts. I wouldn't be entirely startled to see a red for the far SE because it has a lower threshold than northern areas, but I think it probably won't happen, it seems to be very rare to get a red due to wind)