Met Office weather warnings issued as Scotland to be hit with blast of Arctic snow and ice

Scotland is to be hit with a blast of snow from the Arctic next week.

Large parts of the country will see widespread snowfall as the Met Office issued two weather warnings over Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

The first warning covering the north of Scotland comes into force at 4pm on Sunday and continues to 11am on Monday.

A second alert starts at 10am on Monday and covers Glasgow, Edinburgh, Stirling, and much of the south of Scotland.

It is in effect until 10am on Tuesday.

The Met Office warned there is a chance that some rural communities could become cut off and vehicles could be stranded.

The north of the country including Aberdeenshire, Moray and the Highlands showers will turn increasingly wintry with hail, sleet and snow.

Meteorologists forecast around five to 10cm is possible on high ground above 300 metres by Monday morning.

On Monday and Tuesday, areas such as Strathclyde, Central, Tayside and Fife as well as the Borders and Dumfries and Galloway will be subject to as much as 15 to 20cm above.

Power cuts and disruption to travel may occur across the country next week, the Met Office has warned.

Insight Philip Petrie STV weather presenter

Over the past couple of weeks or so we have had high pressure across much of the UK, but we do start to see a change as we head into the weekend. Today we’ve seen a cold front sinking south eastwards bringing a band of rain and also introducing much colder air behind it tonight into tomorrow.

As we continue through Saturday night and into Sunday an area of low pressure moves in, bringing with it outbreaks of rain and when that hits the cold air it will produce rain, sleet, hail and snow.

Once that first low pressure clears through a second system move in on Monday and this is the more impactful one that brings more widespread snow. It could be a shock to the system as we’ve seen a lot of mild conditions lately with temperatures averaging around 14c/15c – but in the next few days some spots across Scotland won’t get higher than 5c/6c.

Of course this is all still very far away so there is a lot of uncertainty at the moment. Once the confidence grows over the weekend we will have more idea of where the rain will be and where the snow will be and it is likely the warnings might change.