UK weather: Storm Lorenzo to cause travel chaos as five days of rain and wind batter Britain

4 October 2019, 10:37

By Naomi Bartram

@naomibartram

It’s time to officially put away the shorts and dig out the raincoat.

The UK will be swept by a week of rainy downpours potentially causing floods, power cutouts and travel chaos.

As Hurricane Lorenzo hits today, it will bring with it gale force winds and torrential showers which are expected to continue for five days.

The 500-mile-wide storm is expected push across the west coast before spreading to the rest of the country.

For England and Wales, there will be outbreaks of rain with eight flood warnings and 34 flood alerts in place. Most of the warnings are across the Midlands and north of England.

Met Office Meteorologist Alex Deakin said: “Now it could cause some travel disruptions certainly worthy of note if you’re in a high sided vehicle.

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“There are warnings in force for most of Friday but we should see some sunny spells developing across parts of southern England as weak as a few showers.

“As I said, it won’t be as cold as Thursday morning but fairly soggy through parts of Northern Ireland and Wales.”

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Through the weekend there will continue to be heavy rain and strong winds at times, and up to 60mm of rain can be expected in parts of Scotland on Sunday.

This is almost half the 127mm average rainfall for the UK in the whole month of October, while the east and south-east could be saturated by 40mm of rain.

It’s set to continue into Monday as well, with 20mm of rain predicted in west England and up to 40mm over Wales, with the weather staying wet and windy until the end of Wednesday.

This comes after Storm Lorenzo powered it’s way across the north Atlantic bring with it 165mph last week.

As it hit Europe, the Met Office said: “The National Hurricane Center has confirmed Hurricane Lorenzo is the strongest on record this far north and east in the Atlantic.”