The Met Office has issued a yellow weather warning for strong winds across parts of the south and south-west of England until 21:00 BST, with coastal counties and islands facing the most unsettled conditions. Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, English Channel coastal districts, the Isle of Wight and parts of Sussex were all in the warning area.
The warning matters now because the winds were already building through the morning and were expected to reach Sussex by mid-afternoon, affecting roads, rail, flights and ferries during the busiest part of the day. Gusts of 45 to 50mph were likely, with 55mph possible in exposed places, and the Met Office also warned of power outages and damage to temporary structures.
South West broadcast meteorologist Linda Ludlow said an area of low pressure sweeping across the region was bringing “unseasonable June weather with persistent rain and strong winds”. That system was set to keep the weather unsettled through the day, with heavy rain sweeping east for the rest of the morning and brighter spells in the far west expected to clear Devon by mid-afternoon.
The warning carried an immediate contradiction of sorts: before lunchtime, the peak gust recorded so far had already reached 51mph on the Isles of Scilly, just above the Met Office’s lower end of the forecast range. The agency had described the winds as unseasonably strong for June, and the highest gusts were already hitting exposed coastal areas before the strongest phase of the afternoon wind shift had fully arrived.
By late afternoon, the wind was expected to turn more westerly and remain fresh to strong before easing overnight. That leaves the main question less about whether the weather will bite and more about how much disruption the coastal transport network and power infrastructure actually endure before the warning ends at 21:00 BST.
