Thousands of people are facing another night without power in Scotland and north-east England after two storms battered parts of the UK.
Some schools in Scotland will remain closed on Tuesday after winds of up to 92mph were recorded in northern parts of the UK over the weekend as the storms Malik and Corrie hurtled in from the Atlantic.
Northern Powergrid said about 80,000 of its customers in the north-east were affected by power cuts across the weekend, and about 1,800 were still without power on Monday evening..
In Scotland, about 38,000 households suffered power cuts, largely in Aberdeenshire and the Angus border, as well as parts of Perthshire, the Highlands, Western Isles and the Moray coast.
SSE, which supplies electricity to much of Scotland, said: “Restoration efforts from Storm Corrie will continue into Tuesday with the possibility that for small clusters of customers this may extend into Wednesday, subject to today’s damage assessment.”
In Aberdeenshire, food vans were offering hot meals to households with no power throughout Monday, while leisure centres were open throughout the day for people to shower and charge their phones. Twelve schools in the region will remain closed on Tuesday due to heating, hot water and catering issues, the local council said.
Andy Bilclough, director of field operations at Northern Powergrid, said on Monday evening: “It is fair to say that Storm Corrie hasn’t helped. But we are making good progress and we have more teams coming to help later in the day. The larger jobs that affect the supplies to multiple customers are now all under way. Some are quite large and so will run through this evening and into tonight. Our whole team’s commitment is to get as much done as possible tonight – and get all our customers back on supply as soon as possible.”
The back-to-back storms were linked to two deaths over the weekend, after a nine-year-old boy in Staffordshire and a 60-year-old woman in Aberdeen died after being hit by falling trees on Saturday.
Storm Malik was named by the Danish Meteorological Institute and Corrie by the UK Met Office. The Met Office lists storms alphabetically but skips Q, U, X, Y and Z to comply with international storm-naming conventions and to maintain consistency for official storm naming in the North Atlantic.
On Monday night, two flood warnings remained in place for parts of the south-east coast of England, with the Environment Agency warning that flooding was expected along the tidal rivers Waveney and Yare because of exceptionally high tides at Great Yarmouth.
There was major travel disruption across England and Scotland as operators including ScotRail, London North Eastern Railway, CrossCountry and TransPennine Express cancelled or suspended services on Monday morning.
