Millions of people in Ireland and northern parts of the UK on Friday heeded the advice of authorities to stay home in the face of hurricane-force winds that disabled power networks and brought widespread travel disruptions.
Forecasters had issued a rare “red” weather warning, meaning danger to life, across the whole island of Ireland and central and southwest Scotland.
Ireland bore the brunt of the storm first, as it was hit with wind gusts of 183kph, the strongest since World War II, as a winter storm spiraled in from the Atlantic before hitting Scotland.
Photo: AFP
A man died after a tree fell on his car in County Donegal in the northwest of Ireland, local police said.
City centers, such as Dublin in Ireland, Belfast in Northern Ireland and Glasgow in Scotland were eerily quiet, much like the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, as shops stayed closed and people heeded the advice to not venture out.
For those that did leave home and were caught in one of the wind gusts, it was a struggle to stay upright.
“I want to thank members of the public for largely following Police Scotland’s advice not to travel,” Scottish First Minister John Swinney said.
More than 1 million homes, farms and businesses on the island of Ireland and Northern Ireland were without power as record-breaking wind speeds swept across the island. A further 100,000 customers in Scotland were also reported to have lost power.
Schools were closed and trains, ferries and more than 1,000 flights were canceled in the Republic of Ireland and the UK, even as far south as London Heathrow, as the system, named Storm Eowyn by weather authorities, roared in.
The disruption was set to last through yesterday.
ScotRail said the storm caused significant damage to infrastructure and that a full assessment of the network would need to be done, which would include the removal of debris.
Ireland’s weather office, Met Eireann, said the 183kph gusts early on Friday were recorded at Mace Head on the west coast, beating a record of 182kph set in 1945. Wind speeds in Scotland were slightly lower through the day, although still historically high.
Part of the storm’s energy originated with the system that brought historic snowfall along the Gulf Coast of the US, said Jason Nicholls, lead international forecaster at the private weather company AccuWeather.
Scientists say that pinpointing the exact influence of climate change on a storm is challenging, but all storms are happening in an atmosphere that is warming abnormally fast due to human-released pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane.
“As the climate gets warmer, we can expect these storms to become even more intense, with greater damages,” said Hayley Fowler, a professor of climate change effects at Newcastle University.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
PROBE: Last week, Romanian prosecutors launched a criminal investigation against presidential candidate Calin Georgescu accusing him of supporting fascist groups Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Romania’s capital on Saturday in the latest anti-government demonstration by far-right groups after a top court canceled a presidential election in the EU country last year. Protesters converged in front of the government building in Bucharest, waving Romania’s tricolor flags and chanting slogans such as “down with the government” and “thieves.” Many expressed support for Calin Georgescu, who emerged as the frontrunner in December’s canceled election, and demanded they be resumed from the second round. George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), which organized the protest,
RSS