Outlook for Monday to Wednesday:

Very wet with gales or severe gales Monday and early Tuesday. Rain clears Tuesday, then colder with sunshine and scattered showers, wintry in places. Winds easing in the south later.

Issued at: 0400 on Sat 21 Dec 2013

Certainly not the widespread snow a Newspaper is expecting

I got as far as

"BRITAIN is on course for its first proper White Christmas in DECADES..."

I've experienced 4 white christmases in the last 10 years. Went sledging on Xmas day in 2010.

Utter tosh!

I know, if 2010 wasn't a proper white xmas then what is?! The implication that 2013 could be worse than 2010 is absolutely ridiciculous. I am personally unusure that any low ground will see snow at all, but even if it does turn out to be cold enough, we are looking at transient wet snow not postcard scenes. 

Are the BBC weather bulletins being a little non committal about extent and severity of the Christmas Eve storm ? Quick graphic of the pressure chart then told to go and look at the website. Mmm.

There is I can assure you a lot of serious discussion ongoing at HQ.
Thee will be new warnings issued by midday and many will be amber.

Have to say I was a little surprised by the Chris Fawkes forecast I have just seen, thought he would have made more of the winds, I expected a comment of structual damage to be made.

The situation does look severe to me

I find it astonshing and appalling that the Met Office warnings for strong winds only cover the north on Tuesday.

I find it astonshing and appalling that the Met Office warnings for strong winds only cover the north on Tuesday.

Originally Posted by: Essan 

For some reason, the MetO page hasn't been updated with the wind warnings for Monday yet.  There's an amber warning for parts of England - just don't where it covers!

Originally Posted by: ManUtdMatt1986 

I noticed that, just the two for Rain. I seem to remember in 2010 before the snow event that on the Sunday the warnings went missing till Monday morning.

Maybe the Amber Rain for the South is correct but the Rain symbol on the Yellow should be a wind symbol? The wrriten warning mentions the gales.

Listening to the BBC (not the actual weather forecasts but the news bullitens) you'd think that it was only going to affect north west Scotland and south west England. Tut tut tut.

Not sure why the Met Office are going for wind gusts across the SE 10-15mph less than shown by the high-res GFS and WRF output. Usually those models are very close to the mark, and in fact they underestimated the St. Jude storm peak gusts by 5mph or so.

It's because of the Met Office saying 50-60mph that I have relatives determined to travel tomorrow, when really I'd rather they didn't!

As it is, the region around the Solent does look to see wind gusts some 10mph higher than the SE as a whole, with the coast itself 5-10mph higher again... the former of those details could do with being in the warning details.

What can you do eh?

Evening 

Here are my updated thoughts for the weather in Kent for the next week or so.

Happy Christmas to all 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mvA8JXZ5O0

The metoffice forecast seems very sensible in line with current MO atm. Indeed I would expect confidence to be unusually high, the ensembles show basically no cold at all even in deep FI. Will be interesting to see what excuses the doomsayers come up with this time. 

Cheers Steve! Naturally, I'll be watching this one with high interest (suspect we'll be put on full alert by lunchtime tomorrow).

Thanks for your updates and videos through this last year, have a great Christmas

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/se/se_forecast_wind.html

Gusts in excess of 80mph now forecast for south coast around midnight according to Met O

The hi res Met Office (Beta) forecast shows average sustained  wind speeds of over 50mph for hours around midnight along the south coasts of Kent and Sussex.  Gusts artound 80mph.

BBC breakfast are making it their lead story, that does not surprise me as I think weve all realised for sometime things would be bad.

But the warning for wind is still 'only' a yellow one. And it has gone completely for Scotland & N.Ireland. Given those estimated gusts I would have though at least an amber warning (possibly even red along the coast) would be appropriate. Perhaps it will be updated later.

Just to let people know, the final weather forecast in the xmas series I will do tommorow. I'm going to try and incoperate soundings (probably from the GFS) and other parameters from the high RES models (WRF, EURO4, GFS0.5, NAE) to pinpoint places likely to see snow (although probably won't be too many). I'm considering doing the forecast as a livestream to my YT channel; not because I expect anyone to actually watch it live on xmas eve but more as a personal confidence thing for practise. 

Strong winds across Sussex and Kent

What about elsewhere Fawkesy boy

BBC weather, Met office warnings are a joke much much worse here then St judes day Storm yet only a yellow warning, another fence panel down, 2 more on that side to go 

Peter Gibbs on Radio 4 this morning gave a very lucid explanation for the storms in terms of the temperature contrast between the very cold air over Canada interacting with the very warm air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. He said he had never seen the the jet stream winds looking so strong.