Thought we’d finally said goodbye to cold, bleak weather? Think again. After a lovely few weeks of bright blue skies and balmy temperatures across the country, the Met Office has issued yellow weather warnings for rain. This is the UK, after all.
There’s a 24-hour warning in place for the north west of England, south west, Wales and the west Midlands from 12pm on Tuesday, April 15 and Wednesday, April 16, indicating risk of transport disruption and flooding as a result of heavy downpours. That includes cities like Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter and Liverpool. Temperatures are forecast to drop to around 9-12C.
Large parts of Northern Ireland, including Belfast, have also been issued a yellow warning from 2am to 9pm on Wednesday.
The Met Office said: ‘A spell of heavy and persistent rain is expected to move north across western Britain during Tuesday into early Wednesday. Whilst there is some uncertainty in where the heaviest rain will fall, 20-40 mm of rain is expected fairly widely.
‘A few places may see 50-75 mm of rain during this period: gradually building up in the west following rain on Monday, whilst in parts of the east, falling in shorter periods where heavy showers and thunderstorms become slow-moving.’
There are also some weather forecasters suggesting that there could be some snow this week. Maps from WXCharts show that up to one centimetre could fall on the Scottish Highlands, while Glasgow and northwest England could see up to three centimetres of the stuff.
The maps predict that the snow could drift further south on Friday, appearing in parts of north Wales and the Lake District. Take that forecast with a pinch of salt, though – snow is notoriously hard to forecast accurately.
The Met Office explains that most precipitation either starts off as snow or supercooled raindrops high up in the atmosphere but as it falls to earth, it moves through warmer air and melts. Depending on the temperature of the air near the ground we either see rain or sleet or hail. The thing that makes forecasting snow tricky is that the freezing level can change day by day or even hour by hour. So, don’t dust off your sledge just yet.
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