'Danger to life' as stormy winds and rain to batter whole of Scotland

People have been warned of the risk of flying debris, falling trees and widespread travel disruption.

The whole of Scotland is to be battered by stormy winds bringing a risk to life with gusts of up to 70mph.

The Met Office issued a yellow weather warning as conditions turn increasingly windy over the weekend.

Gusts reaching 50-60mph are expected widely, and even 60-70mph winds could hit populated areas, STV weather presenter Philip Petrie has warned.

Depending on how “powerful” conditions develop over the next 24 hours, the strong winds could become a new named storm – Storm Isha.

The stormy weather is set to cause travel delays to road, air and ferry transport.

The Met Office alert comes into force from 6am on Sunday and is due to last until 6am on Monday.

The agency said there is a small chance that injuries and “danger to life” could occur from flying debris.

The warning covers the whole of Scotland.

There is also a yellow warning from midday on Sunday until midnight the same day for heavy rain across central Scotland.

Philip Petrie
Insight Philip Petrie STV Weather Presenter

Throughout Friday we see a ridge of high pressure moving in, the centre of which is across the south of the UK, which puts Scotland on the northern side of that.

This means the isobars are tightly packed, and therefore it will be turning increasingly windy.

But as we move onto the other side of this ridge of high pressure, the wind direction shifts to a south westerly, combined with low pressure means we see things turning milder across the country with frontal systems moving in from the west to start the weekend.

This means overall things are turning wetter, windier and milder for the weekend. We have a powerful jet stream coming out of North America that fuels an area of low pressure and pushes it towards us on Sunday with the potential that it will be very windy across the country but in particular southern Scotland.

Yesterday the met office issued a yellow weather warning for strong winds for Sunday, and the fact the warning came out so far in advance gives a good indication that things are looking particularly bad, and today the warning was tweaked slightly with an additional rain warning added too.

We’ll be keeping an eye on this over the next 24 hours with the potential that this could be a named storm, making it potentially our second of the year, and our 9th of the storm season so far, but at the moment there is still uncertainty about the precise tracking and impact of the low pressure on Sunday.

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