Two storms in two days as Austen and Boelo target UK

The Met Office have named a new storm, Boelo, which is set to bring another round of stormy weather to the UK over the weekend.

Storm Boelo will be hot on the heels of Storm Austen, the first named storm of the season.

Storm Austen is expected to bring strong winds to south-west England during Friday morning.

The Met Office has issued an amber wind warning for Cornwall, the Isles of Scilly, Plymouth and parts of Devon valid between 1am and 10am on Friday.

Gusts of wind will widely reach 60-70mph, and perhaps 80mph in exposed locations.

Winds of this strength will blow some trees over, bringing a significant risk of transport disruption and there may also be some power cuts.

Some buildings could potentially be damaged by the strongest winds, leading to a risk of flying debris at the height of the storm.

Yellow wind warnings cover most of England and Wales with gusts of wind on Friday forecast to reach 45-60mph, with 70mph gusts likely in some places.

As strong as these winds are, the most damaging winds will run to the south of the low pressure centre.

That puts north-west France firmly in the firing line and parts of Brittany could see gusts close to 90mph.

The Channel Islands are also expecting severe gales with gusts up to 80mph.

All schools have been told to close on Friday because of the high winds predicted to be caused by Storm Austen, the Government of Jersey has said.

Heavy rain in Scotland may cause some localised flooding with a Met Office yellow warning for 20-40mm of rain forecast with up to 80mm accumulating in a few areas through Friday.

Storm Boelo will bring wet and windy weather across the whole of the UK on Saturday with poor travelling conditions expected due to surface water and spray on faster roads and motorways.

The strongest winds will move into Scotland on Saturday afternoon, reaching a peak overnight.

The Met Office have also issued yellow wind warnings for Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England valid on Saturday and lasting most of Sunday.

Gusts are forecast to reach 50-65mph widely and could reach 80mph in exposed locations.

There could be some localised disruption with strong winds funnelling through the Central Lowlands for a time.

Transport disruption is expected and there may be some power cuts. Following recent spells of wet weather, there is an additional risk of some localised flooding.

It's not unusual to get storms so close together, in fact they quite often arrive in clusters.

A strong jet stream is needed to rapidly develop powerful wind storms. The process involved in creating such storms involves shifting warmer air northwards and cooler air southwards across vast areas of the Atlantic.

These temperature contrasts can provide a fertile environment for new low pressure systems to develop and if these subsequently get steered beneath a developmental area of a powerful jet stream, they can rapidly develop to create a new named storm with damaging winds.

Although named storms can affect the UK at any time of the year, analysis shows they are much less common in spring and early summer.

The only month with no named storms in the eleven years that we've been naming storms in the UK, is May.

The chances of seeing a storm increases from late summer and throughout autumn with the peak of the season arriving in our winter months.

This increase in storminess is why the storm-naming season begins in September each year.

In about half of the years since 2015, the first storm arrived after 1 November.