Storm Austen Brings Yellow Wind Warning Across West Kent Today

The first named storm of the season has arrived, and West Kent is under a Met Office yellow wind warning for the rest of today. Storm Austen is moving west to east across the UK through Friday, and while the strongest gusts are expected in the South West, the warning area was extended to cover Kent along with the whole of London and the South East.

The Met Office's live warning covers London and the South East, including Kent, from 10am until 9pm today, alongside the South West, Wales, the West Midlands and large parts of northern England. For this region specifically, the Met Office describes "a spell of strong winds, touching gales at times," with inland gusts of around 45 to 55mph likely during Friday daytime - lower than the South West, which is bearing the brunt of the storm and sits under its own, stronger warnings. An earlier, overnight yellow wind warning also covered Kent from 10pm Thursday through to 5pm today, so the county has effectively been under warning since last night.

A yellow warning is the lowest of the Met Office's three alert levels, but it's not nothing: expect the possibility of short delays to road, rail and bus services, a small chance of localised power cuts, and a real risk of falling branches or minor debris in the wind. That risk is slightly higher than it might otherwise be for late October, since the Met Office notes that many trees are still in full leaf, making them more likely to come down or shed branches in strong gusts than they would be once they're bare. Winds are expected to ease later this evening as the storm clears east.

Unlike some autumn storms, this one isn't bringing a flooding threat to West Kent. The Environment Agency's flood warning service showed no flood warnings or alerts in force anywhere in Kent as of this afternoon, and rated the flood risk across the county as "very low" into the weekend - so today's story is wind, not water. A second storm, Boelo, is due to bring further wind warnings to Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England this weekend, but as things stand it isn't forecast to reach Kent. Source: Met Office, UK warnings for 23 October, Environment Agency, flooding in Kent. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.