Nearly a million homes were without electricity on Friday in Ireland and Scotland, hit by storm Eowyn and its unprecedentedly powerful winds.
After sweeping across Ireland, where the red alert in force since the morning is now lifted, Éowyn blew strong gusts in Scotland, with ‘destructive’ winds, according to the British meteorological agency, the Met Office.
The strongest gales were recorded south of Glasgow, with 160 km/h, while the Met Office extended the perimeter of the red alert in force in certain parts of the territory.
In Ireland earlier, the storm broke historical records, with gusts measured at 183 km/h near Galway, on the west coast, beyond the previous record of 1945.
In this same area, the average wind speed reached 135 km/h, an unprecedented power, according to the Irish meteorological agency Met Eireann.
‘Weather bomb’
Éowyn was characterized by a phenomenon known as ‘explosive digging’ which produces very intense winds over a restricted geographical area and over a short period, according to explanations from the Met Office.
Météo France, the French national agency, speaks on its website of a ‘meteorological bomb’ to define the rapid deepening of such a depression.
This was the first time that a red alert had been declared in Northern Ireland since this system was put in place in 2011.
‘It’s a historic storm,’ said Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin, who came to power on Thursday, and who held a crisis meeting with the emergency services on Friday.
Scottish Prime Minister John Swinney warned that the situation was ‘very serious’, relaying messages of caution broadcast by the police.
‘Unprecedented’
In total, nearly a million homes, businesses and businesses are without electricity, including 725,000 in Ireland, according to the public operator ESB, which cited ‘widespread’ and ‘unprecedented’ damage to infrastructure. electrical.
-In Northern Ireland, there were 280,000, according to the operator NIE Networks, and more than 22,000 in Scotland according to data from two local distributors.
British and Irish media reported various damage, such as roofs torn off numerous buildings or the destruction of the University of Galway indoor stadium.
Almost all schools remain closed this Friday and transport has been seriously disrupted, with trains and buses stopped.
At Cork, Shannon, Dublin, Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, many flights have been canceled. Traffic gradually resumed as Éowyn progressed eastward.
In Ireland, water supplier Irish Water has warned that more than 150,000 buildings could see their water supply disrupted.
‘Just stay at home’
On Friday morning, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Michelle O’Neill, warned that the province was going to be ‘in the eye of the storm’.
‘We are calling on the public to stay safe, to be very careful and to take all precautions to ensure that they do not make unnecessary trips. Please just stay at home if you can,’ she told BBC Ulster radio.
The rest of the United Kingdom is also placed on alert. The Environment Agency has warned of a risk of flooding in the south of England and the Midlands (central) in the coming days due to the expected bad weather.
This is the fifth storm to hit Europe this season. The previous one, Darragh, caused significant disruption in early December in France as well as in the United Kingdom, where it caused at least two deaths.
/ATS
