Following strong winds and rain, flood warnings are issued, leaving many without electricity.
Around five in the morning, when the power outage started, Storm Darragh woke James Woodbine. His 300-year-old home is perched on a hill in Trofarth, North Wales, where yesterday’s strongest gusts, which reached 93 mph close to Capel Curig, occurred.
The most peculiar thing, according to Woodbine, was the noise. Every time there was a gust, there was a rumble that went through the building and a thrum coming from the ground. That is something I had never heard of. We had Storm Doris in 2017, and I’ve been here for thirty years. However, this is much worse. It’s the most unusual storm I’ve ever seen.
Storm Darragh affected hundreds of thousands of people in Britain and Ireland, including Woodbine. The storm was so severe that the Met Office issued a red wind warning, warning of the potential for fatalities—the first since 2011.
In Longton, close to Preston, a man in his 40s lost his life when a tree fell on his van while he was travelling on a dual carriageway part of the A59. Yesterday afternoon in Birmingham, a tree collapsed and struck a man’s car, killing him. The driver of a Translink airport express bus was rushed to the hospital after it veered off the road and struck a wall close to Antrim in Northern Ireland around three in the morning as the wind picked up speed.
Dyfed-Powys police declared a major incident on Saturday because to the volume of calls regarding uprooted trees and other hazards, and the government reinforced the warning with a siren alarm sent to 3m phones across Wales and south-west England on Friday evening.
The rain poured down as the gusts died down. There were 17 flood warnings in England and 27 in Wales, according to Natural Resources. Additionally, more than 200 flood alerts were issued in areas where flooding might occur. Tayside and the Borders were under warning in Scotland, where an amber warning was in effect.
Some took a chance, but most stayed off the roads. According to Woodbine, the owner of Woody’s Glamping, a location in the Snowdonia foothills, a family with four kids had unexpectedly shown up and asked to stay in one of his tents. He put them up in a more secure lodge instead.
There’s a warning – please, if you’re leaving, you’re going to have to take it very, very carefully, my wife told them.
Roads were largely deserted yesterday, according to traffic cameras. Even the “road to hell” portion of the M25 near Heathrow was relatively calm; by Saturday afternoon, 83 flights had been cancelled at the airport, according to tracking service Flightaware, while dozens more had been cancelled elsewhere, and ferry crossings at Stranraer, the Western Isles, Holyhead, and Fishguard had also been suspended. 14 interruptions were reported by Network Rail.
In the worst-hit areas, those who did venture outside found few places to go. When the storm knocked out power, businesses remained closed and events were cancelled. According to the Energy Networks Association, 177,000 homes in mainland Britain were without electricity yesterday afternoon. The online incident maps of its member networks displayed a sea of dots that extended from Bamburgh in Northumberland to Eastbourne on the south coast.
The Winter Wonderland attraction was among the ten royal parks in London that were closed. The majority of Wales’ football and rugby matches, as well as those in Crawley, Bristol, and Plymouth, were cancelled, and the Merseyside derby between Everton and Liverpool was postponed. Councils stopped recycling centres, some National Trust locations turned away visitors, while Norfolk’s Diss delayed turning on its Christmas lights.
According to the Met Office, the winds will lessen, but Darragh is not finished yet. Wales and England are under a yellow warning on Sunday, and Woodbine has been informed that electricity is not expected to return anytime soon.
It will be thirty-six hours,” he stated. In most cases, a storm lasts for roughly seven hours. We’re quite vulnerable. On Saturday afternoon, the damage was already visible from his rear window.
The canvas roof of one of the glamping tents is torn. I have an ancient blackthorn tree that has been uprooted from the ground. The roof’s tiles are gone. Our bins are all empty. I’ve roped down our hot tub lids because I’ve seen them fly off like frisbees in the past. They are clinging to their lives. But this will continue for another twelve hours.
