The 'Pest from the West' is coming this weekend, but how bad will it be?

Thank god winter is over for another year eh? 

That Beast from the East really was a cantankerous old fellow, bringing lashings of rain and snow which caused the country to grind to a spectacular halt for most of last week, briefly combining with Storm Emma as 15 flood alerts were sent out, red weather warnings were issued for the first time, and yellow warnings abounded.

However, by the weekend, finally - mercifully - temperatures began to rise and the snow began to melt. Which was good news because I’d lost my dog.

BUT WAIT: the drama is not over yet!

Because it’s now being reported that the Beast from the East and Storm Emma are about to be followed by a new menace: the Pest from the West, which is due to land this weekend.

But is this an actual, real thing that we need to know about, or simply Daily Express weather headline fodder?

You can breathe a sigh of relief, because we spoke to Nicola Maxey at the Met Office who told us that ‘the Pest’ would be ‘nowhere near’ the scale of last week’s events.

“There is a low pressure system approaching from the south west which could bring us some weather at the weekend, but at the moment it’s still fairly uncertain where that weather will be and so who’s going to be affected and who’s going to see the worst of the impact - we’re still a few days out so it’s still quite early. But there is a low pressure system which potentially could impact weather in the UK over the weekend.

“Potentially it could bring some heavy rain, it could bring some gale force winds and it could bring a bit of snow on the leading edge. 

“What happens is, it’s relatively warm moist air - and as that comes up and hits the cooler air which is across parts of the UK, where those two systems meet, there potentially could be some snow - but we’re not talking anything on the scale of what you saw last week. 

“Potentially there could be a little bit of snow - at the moment I would think probably for the North, the Pennines, north Wales, that sort of area, but it’s very uncertain at the moment where the system will meet the colder air and where those impacts will be felt - but nothing unlike we’ve seen before, it’s just a normal low pressure system.”

Nicola pointed out that this system had yet to be given an official name, so people may well be jumping ahead of the gun.

“It’s fairly typical for weather at this time of year. Our weather predominantly comes from the west or south west - these sort of low pressure systems that cross the Atlantic bringing periods of rain and stronger winds with them, featuring sometimes snow, depending on the temperatures.”

So there you have it, nothing to worry about.*

*Probably

(Image: Michael Shannon)