Yahoo News Met Office issues six weather warnings as Storm Herminia sweeps across UK
The Met Office has issued more weather warnings as the sixth named storm of the winter season sweeps across the UK.
Storm Herminia, named by the Spanish meteorological office, will bring gusts of up to 80mph and torrential rain. It comes in the wake of Storm Eowyn which brought destruction and travel chaos in large parts of the country after the 'strongest winds in 10 years'.
The new weather front has arrived in the South West and will move northwards across England and Wales during Sunday (January 26). Forecasters say areas that bore the brunt of Storm Eowyn will "generally fair a little bit better" but there will be some snow across higher ground in Scotland.
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A total of six yellow warnings for wind and rain have now been issued for much of the south of the UK during Sunday and Monday. It also includes a warning covering coastal areas in Lancashire until 5pm today.
Met Office meteorologist Tom Morgan said: "It’s also going to be wet and windy over the next few days in southern parts of the UK in particular. In most parts of the UK we’re going to have some very wet and at times also very windy weather over today and Monday.
"But from Tuesday onwards, I’m expecting it generally to stay fairly changeable, but some showers at times and quite windy, but not as disruptive as it has been – I think overall, probably warnings are less likely from Tuesday onwards. Certainly tonight in the south east of the UK, we could see some briefly very strong winds, and we could also see some very strong winds across Cornwall and Devon tomorrow in particular."
Coastal parts of those areas will "very likely" see 60mph to 70mph gusts. There may also be very localised 70mph to 80mph gusts in the South East during Sunday night.
A yellow wind warning runs between 10pm on Sunday and 7am on Monday and covers the the east, south east, south west and north west of England. Gusts of 55-65mph are possible overnight and there is a small chance they could reach 80mph, the Met Office said.
It also spans the West Midlands and Yorkshire. A yellow warning for heavy rain, thundery showers and some localised flooding is active for parts of central and southern England from 8am on Sunday to 6am on Monday.
It is forecast that 10mm to 20mm of rain will fall quite widely, nearing 30mm to 50mm on higher ground. Further heavy rain on Sunday evening could bring it up to 80mm in a few places.
Ministers from across the UK held an emergency Cobra meeting on Saturday to co-ordinate recovery efforts, and extra engineers were dispatched from England to Northern Ireland and Scotland. On Sunday morning, NIE (Northern Ireland Electricity) Networks said 101,000 of its customers remained without electricity after Storm Eowyn. Power has been restored to 183,000.
By 8am on Sunday more than 14,000 SP Energy Networks customers in central and southern Scotland were off-grid though power had been restored to 165,000.
