Yellow weather warnings remain in force as Storm Austen batters a large swathe of the UK with powerful winds and heavy rain on Friday.

South West England is forecast to be worst hit by the storm which the Met Office warns could bring travel disruption and power cuts and a possible danger to life.

Wind gusts of 60-70mph, with 80mph in exposed locations, are forecast across Cornwall and parts of Devon, where the Met Office warning is in force until 17:00 BST.

Wind gust of 45-55mph are forecast more widely across most of England and Wales, where a less severe yellow warning will be in force until 21:00 BST.

A separate yellow warning for rain covers part of Scotland, including Glasgow and Edinburgh, until just before midnight on Saturday.

Yellow weather warnings for wind and rain are in effect across parts of the UK on Friday.

A number of schools are closed in the impacted areas with many others opening later than usual to avoid the strongest winds.

Train cancellations and speed restrictions are possible because of the increased danger of branches and trees blocking railways.

A number of ferry sailings have also been cancelled, including crossings between Pembrokeshire and Ireland.

Yellow wind warnings cover most of England and Wales with gusts of wind on Friday forecast to reach 45-60mph, with 70mph gusts likely in some places.

As strong as these winds are, the most damaging winds will run to the south of the low pressure centre.

That puts north-west France firmly in the firing line and parts of Brittany could see gusts close to 90mph.

The Channel Islands are also expecting severe gales with gusts up to 80mph.

All schools in Jersey have been told to close on Friday because of the high winds predicted to be caused by Storm Austen.

Heavy rain in Scotland may cause some localised flooding with a Met Office yellow warning for 20-40mm of rain forecast with up to 80mm accumulating in a few areas through Friday.

Closely following Storm Austen will be Storm Boelo, named by the Met Office on Thursday and set to bring another round of stormy weather to the UK over the weekend.

The Met Office has now issued an amber warning for wind covering all of Scotland – away from the Northern Isles – along with the far north of Northern Ireland and the far north of England.

Wind gusts of 60-70mph are expected, with 80mph possible on exposed coasts.

There could be some localised disruption with strong winds funneling through the Central Lowlands for a time.

Transport problems are expected and there may be some power cuts.

Following recent spells of wet weather, there is an additional risk of some localised flooding.

Wider yellow Met Office wind warnings cover Orkney, the rest of Northern Ireland and northern England, with gusts of 55-75mph likely, and the chance of isolated 80mph gusts.

Across the whole of the UK, Boelo will bring wet and windy weather on Saturday with poor travelling conditions due to surface water and spray on the roads.

Strong winds will continue on Sunday but rain will increasingly become confined to north-east Scotland with sunshine and blustery showers elsewhere.

It is not unusual to get storms one after another - in fact they quite often arrive in clusters.

A strong jet stream is needed to rapidly develop powerful wind storms. The process involved in creating such storms involves shifting warmer air northwards and cooler air southwards across vast areas of the Atlantic.

These temperature contrasts can provide a fertile environment for new low pressure systems to develop and if these subsequently get steered beneath a developmental area of a powerful jet stream, they can rapidly develop to create a new named storm with damaging winds.

The winter months of December, January and February typically produce the highest number of UK storms

Although named storms can affect the UK at any time of the year, analysis shows they are much less common in spring and early summer.

May is the only month with no named storms in the 11 years that storms have been named in the UK.

The chances of seeing a storm increases from late summer and throughout autumn with the peak of the season arriving in our winter months.

This increase in storminess is why the storm-naming season begins in September each year.

In about half of the years since 2015, the first storm arrived after 1 November.

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