Rain warning issued for north-west England amid ‘three-way split’ in weather

There will be a “three-way split” in weather conditions across the UK on Monday, with a yellow rain warning issued for north-west England.

The Met Office said a band of rain stretching from southern Scotland to south-west England will keep temperatures mild in the south and east, but much colder for the rest of Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Drier conditions and sunny spells could see highs of 14C in southern areas, above average for this time of year, while some parts of Scotland will only see highs of 5C to 7C.

A yellow rain warning covering large parts of Lancashire and Cumbria has been issued from 12pm on Monday to 5am on Tuesday, with around 40 to 50mm possible on high ground and the potential for localised disruption.

It comes after the Scottish village of Kinlochewe provisionally set the UK record for temperature in January after hitting 19.6C on Sunday.

This beats the previous January UK record of 18.3C set at Inchmarlo and Aboyne in 2003 and Aber in 1958 and 1971, the forecaster said.

Craig Snell, meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “We’ve really got a weather front kind of slicing the country and that’s where the rain band is – to the south of it we’ve got the milder air, to the north of it the colder.

“So it’s going to be a cold front which is trying to push that that milder air away. It probably won’t win the day in the south, it will hang on to the milder air for a little bit longer.”

Regions caught in the rain, including southern Scotland, northern England and much of Wales, will see heavy and persistent showers in places and feel “pretty miserable” until rush hour on Tuesday morning, Mr Snell said.

The weather system will clear out into the North Sea by Tuesday, briefly leading to dry conditions across the country.

Another weather front will then move across northern parts of the UK by Wednesday, with yellow wind warnings in place for northern Scotland, but there will still be little rainfall and mild temperatures in the south.