James Woodbine was excited Storm Darragh at 5am, time began to fall. His 300-year-old home is on the top of Trofarth Hill in North Wales, where yesterday’s winds were fierce, measuring 93 mph near Capel Curig.
“You sound like a wonderful thing,” said Woodbine. There was a thunder coming from the ground, a noise that went through the buildings every time it was blown. I have never heard of this before. I’ve been here for 30 years, and we had Hurricane Doris in 2014. But this is much worse. I have never seen such a storm. “
Woodbine is one of hundreds of thousands of people across Britain and Ireland who have been affected by Storm Darragh, which was so severe that the Met Office issued a red wind warning, warning people of the threat to their lives – on only the 19th since 2011.
One man in his 40s died after a tree fell on his van while driving on a dual carriageway on the A59 in Longton, near Preston. Another man died when a tree fell and hit his car in Birmingham yesterday. At 3am, as the winds picked up pace, the Translink airport express bus left on its way and hit a wall near Antrim in Northern Irelandand the director of the hospital.
Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
The government reinforced the warning with loud sirens sent to 3m telephones in Wales and the south west of England on Friday evening, and on Saturday Dyfed-Powys police declared a major incident in the volume of calls about uprooted trees and other accidents.
The winds ceased, the rain fell. Natural Resources Wales issued 27 flood warnings and there were 17 more in England. There were also more than 200 floods where flooding was possible. In ScotlandWhere an electric warning is in place, warnings have been issued in the Friborg and Tayside.
Most people avoided the journeys, few took the risk. Woodbine, who runs Glamping Woody, located in the foothills of Snowdonia, said a family with four children had arrived unexpectedly, asking to stay in one of their tents. He put them in a safer place.
“My wife said to them: ‘It’s a warning, please, if you’re going to go, you’ll have to be very careful.’
Traffic cameras showed mostly empty roads yesterday. Even the section of the M25 “road to hell” near Heathrow was comparatively quiet – the airport had 83 cancellations by Saturday afternoon, according to Flightaware, following the service, with dozens more flights canceled elsewhere and ferry crossings at Stranraer, Western Isles, and Holyhead. and the Fisherman also stopped. Network Rail listed 14 disruptions.
People who ventured out found a few places to go in the worst affected areas. Events were canceled and businesses remained closed after the storm knocked out power. The Energy Networks Association said 177,000 homes in mainland Britain were without electricity yesterday, and its member network’s online incident maps showed a sea of hotspots stretching from Eastburn on the south coast to Bamburgh in Northumberland.
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London’s 10 royal gardens are closed, including the Winter Wonderland attraction. The Merseyside derby between Everton and Liverpool has been extended, with the most rugby and dressage on Cambriaas well as a pair of crawley pedicels, Bristol and Plymouth, were abolished. People have been turned away from visiting some National Trust sites and councils have closed recycling centres. and Diss put off changing the Christmas lights in Norfolk.
The winds are dying down, the Met Office said, but Darragh isn’t done yet. A yellow warning was in place across England and Wales on Sunday, and Woodbine warned power was unlikely to return soon.
“This is going to take 36 hours,” he said. “Usually, you get the weather for seven hours or so. We are quite open. “He could already see the damage from his window on Saturday afternoon.
“One of the tents has a pitched canvas roof – that’s alum. I have an old tree, black, that’s been pulled out of the ground. Tiles are the roof. All of ours are gone. I bought hot barrel covers that I’ve been wearing because I’ve seen them fly like frisbees before. They hang for dear life. But in 12 hours I found out