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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
National
Michael Howie

Snow and ice alert for UK with up to 10cm expected to fall as winter weather is 'stuck on repeat'

The Met Office has issued fresh warnings for snow and ice later this week as the miserable winter weather shows little sign of ending.

Two yellow alerts have been announced for Thursday and Friday.

One covers almost the whole of Scotland and runs from 4pm on Thursday until midday on Friday.

It says snow showers affecting high ground will likely fall to low levels through Thursday evening and overnight

As much as 10cm of snow could fall on hills above 300m, with 1-2cm expected on lower ground.

A second weather warning for snow and ice has been issued for northern England starting at 7pm on Thursday and running to midday on Friday.

Both alerts warn of potential injuries from slipping on ice, as well as longer journey times on roads and railways.

The Met Office has already issued yellow warnings of rain in part of western Scotland and in the east from Aberdeenshire down to Fife, in force until midnight on Wednesday.

Forecasters warn that rain, likely to be heavy at times, will persist across eastern Scotland during the day and predict that this may lead to some disruption and possible flooding as it comes after recent rainfall.

In London, temperatures are expected to dip to around 5C on Friday with yet more rain likely to fall.

After a miserable few weeks, there is a glimmer of hope with sunshine forecast on Saturday.

However it looks like only a brief respite from the rain, with more wet and mild weather forecast for Sunday the rest of next week.

Worcestershire County Cricket Club’s ground is among the areas flooded in recent days (Jacob King/PA) (PA Wire)

Met Office spokesman Grahame Madge said: “Currently we've got warnings out for parts of Scotland, particularly the east and parts of the south-west west of Glasgow. Those are rain warnings, but increasingly, there will be a bit of snow mixed in with those as the conditions start to cool.

“Over the next few days, and beginning in northern Scotland really from today, we'll start to see an incursion of an air mass called Arctic maritime air, and that will bring temperatures down.

“That will begin to extend down southwards from Scotland into parts of northern England, possibly getting further south than that by the weekend.

“There may be some snow showers to lower levels. So the snow and ice warnings that we've issued at the moment cover pretty much Scotland and Northern parts of England. There may be some snow showers a little bit further south than that.

A vehicle passes through floodwater in Houndsfield Lane, Birmingham (Jacob King/PA Wire)

“We're not expecting any particularly impactful snow and the conditions will be quite brief before we get another system coming in from the Atlantic over the weekend, but for the next few days, it will feel quite a bit different, as we've got colder air coming in.”

The latest warnings come after a record-breaking month of rain, which became the wettest January on record for Cornwall in south-west England and County Down in Northern Ireland, according to the Met Office.

The forecaster said winter has been “stuck on repeat” for many people, with 26 of its weather stations setting new records for January rainfall.

The UK has already seen 89% of the average rainfall expected for meteorological winter (December, January and February) - while England has exceeded it by 11%, it said.

The seemingly endless bad weather is as a result of the Atlantic jet stream steering low-pressure systems over the UK.

These systems have become “trapped” by a block of cold air over Scandinavia, which is preventing them from progressing eastwards.

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