The Met Office has issued two yellow weather warnings, one for strong winds in the southern parts of England and the second for thunderstorms.
The warning for wind in southern England is in place until 6pm on Wednesday and for parts of the England and Wales the yellow warning is for thunderstorms which will remain in place until 8pm.
Oli Claydon, a spokesman for the Met Office, told the PA news agency: “The rainfall comes in quite an intense downpour so we could see some surface water issues on the roads, for example.
“We could see some lightning strikes in amongst that which could cause some disruption to power services. Those sorts of impacts, and delays to public transport, are possible as well.”
Claydon added: “We’ve also got a separate area of yellow warning for rain that covers some parts of Yorkshire, essentially, so running just north of Sheffield covering Leeds, Middlesbrough, Scarborough, York, Hull, that sort of area (and) that runs from 11 o’clock today until eight o’clock this evening.
“And that is more for some persistent rain throughout the day that will accumulate over a longer period of time so we could see 30-50mm building.”
In Portsmouth, Christchurch, Poole and the Isle of White the Environment Agency has issued 15 flood alerts and the whole of the south coast and Western Cornwall could be affected by wind speeds up to 60 mph.
Claydon said: “The weather (is) generally remaining unsettled, there is a sort of a calmer spell in parts of the west on Fridays as we get high pressure bringing slightly more settled conditions for a time on Friday in the west.
“But further wet, windy weather (is) expected by the time we get to Saturday, as another area of low pressure moves in from the west, so remaining unsettled.
“There are some early signs, there could be some potentially more settled or warm (weather), by the end of next week.
“So, there’s a lot of uncertainty around that because of the movement of the various low pressure systems across the Atlantic that would lead to that.”
