Scotland is to be hit by gusts of up to 70mph and power cuts as Storm Erik sweeps the country.
High winds and heavy rain are expected to cause travel chaos as the Met Office issued weather warnings from Friday morning until Saturday afternoon.
While the west coast is expected to be worst hit, Police Scotland have also warned drivers across the Highlands, Angus Aberdeenshire, moray, Perth, Kinross, Stirlingshire and Argyll and Bute.
Flooding already hit commuters on the M8 this morning as Glasgow was hit with heavy downpours.
The Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) also issued a flood warning for most of the country.
Heavy rain & snowmelt may cause flooding tomorrow into Sat. Level of impact dependant on the location of heaviest rainfall, and the timing and amount of snow melt. More information in Flood Alerts being issued for areas most affected. See https://t.co/JjFrR5xbtj #floodaware pic.twitter.com/FjdV717TRK
— SEPA (@ScottishEPA) February 7, 2019
Traffic Scotland has urged drivers to be aware of surface spray, leave extra time for journeys and to avoid braking if aquaplaning occurs as forecasters predict inland gusts of 60mph.
The Met Office website reads: "A deep area of low pressure will bring windy and often wet weather across much of the UK on Friday and Saturday.
"A period of particularly strong winds will affect Northern Ireland and western Scotland on Friday, with gusts of 50 to 60mph inland and occasionally 70mph along exposed coasts.
"Winds will ease slightly on Friday evening."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here