Now dig in for Jocelyn, the 80mph warm storm

BRITAIN battened down the hatches for the second time in as many days last night as yet another storm barrelled in.

Jocelyn – the tenth named storm of the season – pounded the country with high winds and rain even as efforts to clear up from deadly Storm Isha were continuing.

Yellow warnings of wind and rain were in place for all of Scotland and large parts of England and Wales, with further widespread disruption, power cuts and flooding expected.

After weeks of freezing temperatures, the storm dragged in warm air from the Atlantic – with Murlough in Northern Ireland seeing the mercury hit 15.6C (60F) yesterday afternoon.

Jocelyn is due to bring winds of up to 80mph in Scotland, while gusts of 71mph were recorded in Lake Vyrnwy, North Wales.

The latest storm brought more warnings of hazardous driving conditions, road closures and disruption on the railways.

The public were being advised not to travel last night in northern England and Scotland – with trains running across the border suspended and not expected to resume until lunchtime today.

Airlines also warned the high winds could cause delays, after Isha disrupted more than 100 flights on Sunday and Monday.

And after five inches of rain fell on Wet Sleddale Reservoir in Cumbria during Isha, there were fears of fresh flooding in the county. There were 17 flood warnings in place yesterday in Cumbria, Lancashire, Yorkshire, East Anglia and southern England, and 92 lower-level flood alerts.

Despite the severe weather, the storms are bringing in very mild air, with temperatures across the South West and parts of Northern Ireland forecast to hit 14C (57F) overnight – as warm as Rome.

The Met Office said yesterday was the warmest day of the year so far – with the 15.6C peak in Murlough, County Down, not far off the January record of 18.3C (65F) set at Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, in 2003.

The UK’s average daily maximum temperature in late January is around 6-7C (43-45F).

The latest storm comes after Isha brought the strongest January winds in eight years, with 107mph gusts recorded on the Tay Bridge and 99mph at Brizlee Wood, Northumberland.

Isha resulted in at least five deaths in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, four as a result of road accidents. The fifth death, on Monday morning, involved a man in Bradford who is thought to have fallen into a hole in roadworks where safety barriers had been blown away.

Met Office spokesman Oli Claydon said the succession of storms is due to a ‘very active jet stream’ this winter, caused by bitterly cold weather in North America.

He said: ‘Apart from the recent couple of weeks when it was very cold, we have been in a run of unsettled weather from Christmas. We are now back in the path of that reinvigorated jet stream.’

‘In the path of an active jet stream’