Weather warning in place as Storm Antoni set to bring wet and windy weather to Northern Ireland

Storm Antoni has been named by the Met Office as unseasonably wet and windy weather is expected to cross the UK.

Northern Ireland will be the first to see the influence of this low-pressure system, with a warning for rain in force from the early hours of Saturday morning.

UTV weather presenter Aisling Creevey says "Storm Antoni will bring some potentially disruptive weather on Saturday as it moves from west to east. Northern Ireland is likely to see some of the highest rainfall totals, with 40-60mm falling in some spots, but 20-30 more widely.

"The rain will be falling on already Saturday ground where Northern Ireland saw its wettest July on record.

"The heaviest of the rain will clear away by the evening leaving a rather cool air mass behind.

"Storm Antoni is the first storm named by the Met Office during the 2022 / 2023 season, which ends in September.

"The Met Office is a member of the northern Storm Centre for northern Europe and during the 2022/2023 storm season other members have named low pressure centres that came close to or crossed the UK but were expected to have little impact here. "It is expected to stay breezy on Saturday aftenroon and while there are showers around on Sunday, the winds will be lighter and it will feel warmer. "A warming trend is still expected from Tuesday and as it stands the second half of August is looking more settled with some consecutive dry days of weather.

"This is the third August storm to be named since the era of storm naming began in 2015-2016. The other storms were Storm Ellen and Storm Francis.

"Antoni is our 50th named storm since 2015 and only the 5th to happen over the summer months; storm hector was in June 2018 and Storm Evert was in July 2021."

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