A summary of today's developments
More than 1,000 flights were cancelled and a number of main roads closed as millions of people in the UK and Ireland were asked to stay home amid red “danger to life” warnings owing to a rare “weather bomb” brought by Storm Éowyn.
A man died after a tree fell on his car during Storm Eowyn in Co Donegal, police in Ireland said.
More than one million homes, farms and businesses in the Republic of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland are without power as record-breaking wind speeds swept across the area. ESB Networks in Ireland and NIE Networks said they expect significant further outages as Storm Eowyn continues to batter parts of the island, with 725,000 customers affected in the Republic and 283,000 in Northern Ireland. The Scottish Government’s Resilience Room met on Friday afternoon and officials said around 100,000 households across the country were without power.
There will be no trains in Scotland until at least midday on Saturday, ScotRail said. With the impact of Storm Éowyn causing major transport disruptions, the railway operator said it will not know the full extent of the damage to its tracks and overhead lines until Network Rail carries out a full assessment, a process ScotRail says will “take quite a bit of time”. Workers are expected to start clearing fallen trees and other debris that has landed on the tracks. As a result, all ScotRail services will be suspended until at least 12pm on Saturday.
Millions of people have been urged to stay at home as 100mph winds pose a danger to life and cause travel disruption across the UK, reports the PA news agency. About 4.5 million people received emergency alerts on their phones warning of the incoming storm in the “largest real-life use of the tool to date” on Thursday, reports the PA news agency, with more amber and yellow weather warnings for wind and rain issued for across the weekend.
Police Scotland said its officers had responded to around 1,500 weather-related incidents across the country related to Storm Eowyn by 6pm on Friday.
PA news agency analysis of flight tracking website FlightRadar24 shows at least 334 flights have been cancelled across airports in Aberdeen, Belfast, Edinburgh and Glasgow. According to the PA news agency, this means about 50,000 passengers have been affected.
Satellite imagery potentially shows a dangerous weather phenomenon known as a ‘sting jet’ formed over Ireland on Friday morning, according to the Met Office. A sting jet is a small area of very intense winds, which can be as strong as 100mph or more, according to the weather service. In a sting jet, the strongest winds usually last between three and four hours across an area as small as 30 miles, the forecaster said.
