THE Met Office has issued a severe weather warning for the south west from midnight tonight to 9pm tomorrow evening.

Areas of heavy and locally thundery rain are expected to move north and west across the southern half of England along with Wales during the early hours of Thursday.

A brief period of drier weather reaching the extreme southeast around midnight Thursday will follow northwestwards, probably reaching much of Wales and southwest England later in the morning. However, scattered locally heavy showers, with the risk of some slow-moving thundery downpours, are likely to develop quite quickly during Thursday, only slowly dying out in the evening. The public should be aware of the risk of localised flooding.