Storm Ashley Arrives: A wild end to the weekend for some

After rapidly deepening in the Atlantic yesterday, Storm Ashley is now on the scene to bring a wet end to the weekend for many of us, and a very end to the weekend for those in the North and West. 

Following an initial burst of strong southerly winds arrived first thing, the next bout will move in from the west during the remainder of the day as the low approaches with gusts of 60-70 mph in exposed parts of Northern and Western Britain (from Wales northwards), and the potential for even higher gusts in northwest England and Scotland - particularly, but not neccessarily exclusively in the west.

The bands of rain which arrived overnight, will continue to move through to the east during the remainder of Sunday, clearing eastern England during the afternoon. Further heavy downpours, sometimes merging into longer spells of rain will move across Ireland and into Scotland though, with some of those making it down into Northern England and Wales. 

Met Office warnings for both wind and rain have been issued - including an Amber warning for wind in western Scotland where gusts in excess of 80mph are possible. 

As the low pressure system moves past Northern Scotland overnight tonight, it'll begin to fill (weaken), allowing the winds to slowly ease down, but they'll remain gusty and strong in the north and east of Scotland until Monday morning. 

Monday will be calmer, but still on the blustery side across the northern half of the UK. There'll be 3 main zones of weather, some persistent rain may affect the far southeast, heavy, blustery showers will continnue to blow through into Scotland, Ireland and the far north of England. In between it'll be drier and brighter with a scattering of showers which will mostly affect western regions.