The Met Office announced yesterday that:

Storm Katie is forecast to affect southern England and south Wales on Easter Monday

Anticipating the development of an area of low pressure, which will affect southern England and south Wales on Easter Monday, The Met Office has decided to name the storm Katie. This will be the 11th named storm since last autumn.

More on Storm Katie is Heading Our Way

This morning the Met Office issued yet another severe weather warning for South West England. Here's their map for tomorrow:

The worst of the rain will be north-east of here, but regarding the winds the Met Office have this to say:

More on Haldon Forest Park Closes Again

Tropical Cyclone Winston has already headed east across the South Pacific past Fiji. Now he has suddenly reversed direction and is heading directly for Fiji where he is expected to arrive as a category 5 storm. Here is the current Joint Typhoon Warning Center forecast track for Winston:

More on Fiji in the Path of 200 mph Cyclone Winston

Here's how the econnexus.org.uk flood widget looks shortly after midday on February 6th 2016:

and here's how the UK Met Office's current "amber" weather warning map looked earlier in the day:

More on Severe Flood Warning for Portreath

I was in a series of meetings halfway up a London skyscraper listening to the remnants of Blizzard/Winter Storm Jonas last week, so my news of Storm Gertrude is slightly belated. Before Gertie arrived one of our number had to jump on a train back to the North of England to deal with a personal flooding problem thanks to the amount of precipitation that ex Jonas deposited on the already sodden soil up there. He wasn't the only one affected:

More on When Henry Met Gertie (and Jonas, and Imogen?)

As we previously reported the extraordinary North Atlantic cyclone called Alex became a hurricane yesterday. This morning (UTC) we wake to discover that in their most recent update on his progress the National Hurricane Center are predicting that even though Alex has now weakened slightly he will carry his hurricane force winds all the way to Greenland:

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The Met Office currently has a yellow weather warning for wind in place for South West England for tomorrow:

saying that:

Winds are already strong in many places though Sunday. However, west to southwesterly winds are expected to increase further during Monday. Inland gusts of 40-45 mph are possible, whilst gusts may exceed 50 mph along the north coasts of Cornwall, Devon and Somerset

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We've had quite a nice summer so far here in South West England but it looks as though that is about to change, temporarily at least. Bertha began life as a tropical storm east of the Antilles on August 1st 2014, over the following 2 days she passed over several Caribbean islands before briefly reaching the status of a category 1 hurricane on August 4th. The following day Bertha was downgraded to a tropical storm again, but now her remnants  are bearing down on SW England. According to the Met Office at the moment:

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My title today is a quote from John Barrett, who is Professor of Sustainability Research at the University of Leeds. You can listen to him saying those words near the end of this extract from the Paul Hudson Weather Show originally broadcast by BBC Regional Radio across the North of England on May 25th 2014, shortly after John gave a presentation at the Transformational Climate Science conference at the University of Exeter:

More on The Two Degree Target Is Close To Impossible

The videos from the Transformational Climate Science conference at Exeter University are still not yet available, but on Monday May 19th the Met Office hosted another climate change conference, this time in London. This one was held in conjunction with the Walker Institute at the University of Reading and the Grantham Institute for Climate change at Imperial College London, and was entitled "Climate change – the latest evidence and implications for business". As the title suggests, the audience this time around consisted of businesspeople instead of climate scientists. Some of the speakers from Exeter had headed up to London to speak about all things IPCC for the second time in a week, and those proceedings are already available on video at the Climasphere web site.

More on Climate Change – The Latest Evidence and Implications