Britain is set to suffer at least three more days of heavy downpours and powerful winds, as a new weather front named Storm Herminia hit the UK almost immediately after Storm Eowyn caused major damage and disruption.
Cornwall was buffeted by thunderstorms and winds of up to 82mph on Sunday morning as Herminia made landfall from the South West, having been named by Spanish meteorologists.
The Met Office has now issued a host of weather warnings for wind and rain set to last until Tuesday, as the UK experiences an unsettled start to the week.
With up to 80mm of rain now anticipated in some areas, 167 flood alerts and 27 flood warnings have been issued by the Environment Agency as of late on Sunday, in locations that could become flooded in England. Natural Resources Wales has issued 11 flood alerts, and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency has issued two flood warnings.
The challenging conditions will complicate clear-up efforts after Storm Eowyn – described by the Met Office as proably the most powerful weather system to hit the UK in at least 10 years – uprooted trees, damaged buildings and rail infrastructure, and left more than a million people without power.
After hurricane-force winds reached up to 100mph on Friday, Northern Ireland Electricity Networks said on Sunday morning that more than 100,000 of its customers remained without power, with a further 14,000 SP Energy Networks customers in Scotland also still facing blackouts.
Following an emergency Cobra meeting held by ministers from across the UK, extra engineers were dispatched from England to Northern Ireland and Scotland to help restore power, after warnings that it could take 10 days to fix all of the outages.
Northern Ireland’s first minister Michelle O’Neill described Storm Eowyn and its impact as “unprecedented on every level”, as she visited NIE Networks in Craigavon to thank workers for their tireless efforts to restore power to people’s homes and businesses.
A second man was announced to have been killed after his car was hit by a falling tree. Police Scotland said the 19-year-old died in hospital a day after the collision at 6.45am on Friday in East Ayrshire. Kacper Dudek, 20, was named as the storm’s first victim in Ireland’s County Donegal.
Scottish first minister John Swinney said: “This is tragic and heartbreaking news. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the family and friends of the man who has died.”
Many rail passengers in Scotland were still unable to travel on Sunday morning, with the last trains on many routes having run on Thursday, prior to some 400 reports of power failures and debris – including fallen trees, roofs and trampolines – littering tracks and damaging infrastructure across the network.
Ben Lukey, a flood duty manager at the Environment Agency, said: “Spells of heavy rain mean surface water and river flooding is possible across parts of England on Sunday, overnight into Monday. Although not expected, impacts could include localised flooding from watercourses, drains, channels and flooding from overland flow.”
As Herminia made landfall on Sunday, the BBC cited the National Grid as saying that more than 4,500 properties in Devon and Cornwall had suffered power cuts, while flooding also blocked the rail line between Par and Newquay.
While the challenging weather is expected to finally subside on Wednesday, Met Office meteorologist Tom Morgan said: “It’s also going to be wet and windy over the next few days in southern parts of the UK in particular.
“In most parts of the UK we’re going to have some very wet and at times also very windy weather over today and Monday.
“But from Tuesday onwards, I’m expecting it generally to stay fairly changeable, but some showers at times and quite windy, but not as disruptive as it has been – I think overall, probably warnings are less likely from Tuesday onwards.
“Certainly tonight in the South East of the UK, we could see some briefly very strong winds, and we could also see some very strong winds across Cornwall and Devon tomorrow in particular.”
