South faces weather 'shocker'

Southern Britain is in for a weather "shocker" over the next 48 hours, the Met Office said last night.

Southern Britain is in for a weather "shocker" over the next 48 hours, the Met Office said last night.

Strong winds, torrential rain and chilly temperatures will hit Wales and the South this afternoon as an Atlantic depression sweeps across the country. Gusts of up to 50mph and rainfall of more than 2in (50mm) are likely in some places, while temperatures will drop to 13C, about 10 degrees below the seasonal average.

A Met Office spokesman said: "It's going to be awful, a shocker. It will feel more like November than July."

The weather from Yorkshire northwards is, however, likely to be fine in many places.

The change was caused by a giant kink in the jet stream, the band of stratospheric winds that crosses the Atlantic from west to east. Normally it pulls depressions north of Britain in the summer.