As the Met Office warned on Sunday morning, Storm Ciarán is expected to bring strong winds, heavy rain, and a risk of flooding to southern England and Wales later in the week. The latest storm name to emerge following the chaos caused by Storm Agnes and Storm Babet, Ciarán is forecast to bring very strong winds and heavy rain to southern parts of the UK on Wednesday night and into Thursday.
According to Chris Almond, the Met Office’s deputy chief meteorologist, the storm’s winds will be intense, likely gusting to 80mph along the south coast of England, with a small risk of exposed areas seeing 90mph, and even gusting up to 50 or 60mph farther inland. The storm will also bring heavy rain to much of the UK, with the heaviest rain expected in southern and western areas, with 20-25mm quite widely across the region but up to 40-60mm potentially over higher ground.
Heavy and persistent rain will fall on to already saturated ground, bringing a risk of further impacts such as flooding in areas that are already struggling to clean up from the heavy rainfall over the last week or so. With the storm’s yellow warnings in place for every day until Thursday, people are urged to follow Met Office weather warnings.
As the storm approaches, many parts of the UK are still clearing up after Storm Babet, which caused at least seven deaths and left hundreds homeless due to flooding. The threat is not over, agencies have warned, and the Met Office has issued a number of flood warnings and flood alerts across the country. In England, 73 flood warnings remain in place, including in Alfriston in the South Downs and the Wye estuary at Brockweir in the Forest of Dean. In Scotland, there are 15 flood warnings and 11 flood alerts, while in Wales, there are seven flood warnings and 17 flood alerts.
Effects of Storm CiaránIn addition to the flooding, a tornado hit a West Sussex town on Saturday night, ripping a roof off a house and damaging cars and other properties. The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation carried out an investigation on Sunday and confirmed a “definite tornado” had hit Littlehampton.
Storm Ciarán is named after Ciarán Fearon, a civil servant who works for the Department for Infrastructure in Northern Ireland, and is responsible for sharing information on river levels, coastal flooding, and the impact of severe weather. The naming of storms is a joint enterprise between the UK’s Met Office and equivalent bodies in the Republic of Ireland and the Netherlands. After Ciarán, the next names in the list of potential storms are Debi, Elin, and Fergus, with names going all the way up to Walid, although it would be an exceptional year if that many names were used.