UK weather: Warnings across country for snow and floods

Weather warnings remain in place as snow and rain continue to fall across the UK.

Yellow warnings for snow and ice are in force for much of Scotland through Friday and Saturday, with a chance of power cuts and travel disruption. Dozens of flood warnings and hundreds of flood alerts are also in place across parts of England. “We’ve had the worst of it but it’s still not completely clear,” the Met Office’s Dan Stroud said. It comes after a cold blast sent temperatures well below freezing in parts of the country and brought dozens of schools closures to northern areas of England and Wales on Thursday. Around 10cm (3.9in) of snow was recorded in Kirkwall, Scotland, while 9cm was seen in Bingley, West Yorkshire. BBC Weather’s Elizabeth Rizzini said Friday won’t be as cold for most northern areas, but that conditions could still be unpleasant and windy across eastern Scotland, north east England, and eastern areas of Northern Ireland. She added that higher parts of Scotland could still see some snow, but that it would probably fall as sleet or rain at lower levels. “Gradually the milder air will filter across the whole of the UK through the weekend, with any wintriness on Saturday confined to the far north of Scotland and Shetland,” she said.

The yellow warnings still in place are:

The Met Office said southerly areas of Scotland are likely to see some travel delays on Friday morning. In central and northern areas, there is a further chance of travels delays, as well as disruption to power supply and other services like mobile phone coverage, it said. The flood warnings in England – issued by the Environment Agency – are concentrated around Birmingham, Derby, Milton Keynes, and east Yorkshire. Warnings are also in place along the south coast, including in Southampton, Bournemouth, Weymouth, and Plymouth. More than 200 less-severe flood alerts are also in place in the Midlands and across the south of England. In Scotland, there were two flood warnings while there were 17 flood alerts in Wales. around 08:00. On Thursday, 43.2mm of rainfall was recorded in Harbertonford, south Devon, almost half the average of what the area normally sees in the whole of February. The UK’s cold weather comes as the EU’s climate service says global warming has for the first time exceeded the 1.5C warning limit across an entire year. World leaders promised in 2015 to try to limit the long-term temperature rise to 1.5C, a target seen as crucial to help avoid the most damaging impacts of climate change. Urgent action to cut carbon emissions can still slow warming, scientists say.