“Ewen” causes power outages for thousands in Britain and Ireland

Ireland and the United Kingdom were hit by hurricane-force winds this morning, cutting off power to thousands of homes and businesses and disrupting transportation across the region, Bloomberg News reported.

The storm’s wind speed reached 183 kilometers per hour in Galway, central Ireland, according to the Irish Meteorological Service. The state electricity company, ESP, said that as of 0600 a.m. local time, power was cut off to 560,000 homes, farms and businesses.

As the storm approached, authorities in parts of Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland issued red warnings, closed schools and universities and asked residents to seek safe haven.

National meteorologists in Ireland and the UK issued their harshest weather warnings on Thursday about the impact of Storm Eoin, which is expected to hit the Irish coast in the early hours of Friday morning before heading north-east into Scotland.

The British Meteorological Service issued warnings of bad weather for areas in England and Wales, and warned of the possibility of power outages and disruption of travel, amid expectations of winds at speeds of 50 miles per hour in the capital, London.

Areas in the middle of the capitals, such as Dublin in Ireland, Belfast in Northern Ireland, and Glasgow in Scotland, witnessed an eerie calm, as in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to the Associated Press (AP).

The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh closed its doors, and Prime Minister John Swinney said: “We must be clear. Residents should not travel,” according to the Associated Press (AP).

Jason Nichols, chief international meteorologist at the private weather company AccuWeather, said that part of the storm’s intensity was caused by a system that brought historic snowfall to the Gulf of Mexico coast in the United States, according to AP.