Drivers have been urged to avoid a common cold weather mistake that can make their car a prime target for thieves. It comes as cold, wintry conditions continue, with large parts of Britain under yellow weather warnings for snow and ice over the next couple of days.

One, covering dozens of local authorities in Central, Tayside & Fife, Grampian, Highlands & Eilean Siar, Orkney & Shetland, SW Scotland, Lothian Borders, and Strathclyde, comes into effect at 4pm today (Thursday, February 12) and runs until midday tomorrow. A second, covering multiple local authorities in the East Midlands, North East England, North West England, SW Scotland, Lothian Borders, the West Midlands, and Yorkshire & Humber will be place from 7pm today.

It will also run until midday. In both cases, icy roads and surfaces cause travel disruption. Drivers will be all too familiar with having to defrost their windscreens during cold weather.

But Rhoddy MacKinnon, Group Construction Director at David Wilson Homes has warned against an oversight that leaves vehicles vulnerable to opportunistic carjackers.

"With frosty conditions on the way, defrosting your car is never a fun task," he said. "However, it can also be risky, as thieves target cars left unattended while defrosting.

"This creates the perfect opportunity, as cars are often left running with the keys inside. This practice, sometimes referred to as 'frosting,' has become increasingly common.

To prevent this from happening, he recommends staying with your car at all times it defrosts, "no matter how tempting it may be to nip inside for a couple of minutes".

It may be timely advice, given the brutal conditions some parts of the country will be hit with in the coming hours.

Met Office spokesperson Grahame Madge said: "Currently we've got warnings out for parts of Scotland, particularly the east and parts of the south-west west of Glasgow. Those are rain warnings, but increasingly, there will be a bit of snow mixed in with those as the conditions start to cool.

"Over the next few days, and beginning in northern Scotland really from today, we'll start to see an incursion of an air mass called Arctic maritime air, and that will bring temperatures down.

"That will begin to extend down southwards from Scotland into parts of northern England, possibly getting further south than that by the weekend.

"There may be some snow showers to lower levels. So the snow and ice warnings that we've issued at the moment cover pretty much Scotland and Northern parts of England. There may be some snow showers a little bit further south than that.

"We're not expecting any particularly impactful snow and the conditions will be quite brief before we get another system coming in from the Atlantic over the weekend, but for the next few days, it will feel quite a bit different, as we've got colder air coming in."

You can find the latest yellow weather warnings and guidance on the Met Office website.