Met Office issues weather warning amid ‘perfect recipe’ for fog
It said visibility could be down to 50 metres or less in some places, with delays to buses, trains and flights possible.
Weather conditions in the UK are creating the “perfect recipe” for fog, the Met Office has said, as it issued a warning over difficult travel conditions.
A yellow weather warning forecasting fog across large parts of the country runs from 6pm on Sunday until 11am on Monday, with the potential for disruption to flights.
The warning area, which stretches from York to Bath and covers most of the South East and eastern England, will likely see the densest fog, but low-lying cloud will still affect other areas.
Niamh Murray, Met Office operational meteorologist, said: “There is still going to be patchy fog elsewhere, just not quite as dense or as impactful.
“Parts of the West Country could still see fog, Northern Ireland, really anywhere across much of the UK, even into the central belt of Scotland.”
Ms Murray said current weather conditions are the “perfect recipe” for fog.
“With autumn and winter and getting fog during this time of year, we get much longer nights, and that allows temperatures to sort of fall away,” she told the Press Association.
“We get a longer period of cooling and also the temperatures are much lower, so they’re much closer to the temperature that we need for the air to become saturated and therefore form fog.
“Another thing that we need to form fog is quite light winds, not absolutely no winds.
“We just have the perfect recipe at the moment: light winds, clear skies, long nights, to allow that fog to develop. And particularly if we see the negative numbers, it can quite stubborn to clear the next day.”
Fog may be particularly stubborn overnight into Monday in rural parts of the Midlands, Wales and East Anglia, where temperatures will drop near to freezing, with air frost possible.
Visibility could be down to 50 metres or less in some places, the Met Office warned, with delays to bus and train services possible and a chance of delays or cancellations to flights.
From Tuesday to Thursday, some “pretty welcome” rain is forecast, Ms Murray said.
“Most places are likely to see 10 to 20mm and there is a chance that we could see some places seeing 30mm,” she said.
“But across the South West, where severe drought has been declared and is still enforced by the Environment Agency, there is a chance that we might see some very slow-moving rain, and you could see potentially accumulations up to 50 to 70 mm.”