Tonight:
5°c
Britain braced for gale force winds
18 Nov 2009Parts of Britain will be battered by gale force winds and heavy rain over the next few days, forecasters said.
The Met Office put out warnings for downpours and gusts of wind of up to 60mph for Wales, the North West of England and Northern Ireland for today, tomorrow and Friday.
The outlook is similar for Saturday when the warnings of bad weather extend down to South West England.
Today there could be more than 40mm of rain, and tomorrow and Friday it will continue to fall on already saturated ground, a Met Office spokeswoman said.
She went on: "It's going to be a bit miserable with all that rain around and very cloudy. The wind won't necessarily be as strong as it was last weekend, but it's still gale force when it's gusting up to 60mph."
Tom Tobler from MeteoGroup, the weather division of the Press Association, said it would be very windy across the southern half of the UK this morning, and there would be heavy rain in Wales and northwest England.
"There will be more heavy rain tomorrow mainly across Ireland, western Scotland and in Cumbria."
Through tomorrow night and Friday the rain will move south eastwards over the rest of the UK, getting lighter as it goes, but there will be more downpours on Saturday, he said.
The unsettled pattern will continue into next week.
Mr Tobler said: "It's generally been very mild for this time of year because the strong winds are mostly from the south west so they bring fairly warm air up from the south. Warm air can bring with it more moisture which gives the potential for heavy rain."
Last weekend saw stormy weather with winds of 70mph on Saturday and gusts reaching a top speed of 100mph in outlying areas, as well as driving rain.
The gale-force storms prompted almost 5,000 calls to the Environment Agency's helpline.
The agency has warned homeowners to be alert to the risk of flooding.
In preparation for more rain, Environment Agency workers were carrying out routine inspections of waterways, clearing drains of debris and checking flood defences.
