A fierce storm knocked out power for hundreds of thousands of people in Ireland and threatened to disrupt travel across Britain on Friday, one last punch from a weather pattern that has already delivered bitter cold and record-breaking snow to parts of the United States.
Damaging gales from the storm, which is named Eowyn, are expected throughout Friday, with the strongest winds forecast for parts of Northern Ireland, southern Scotland, and northern and western areas of England and Wales. Wind gusts between 60 and 70 miles per hour are forecast, and gusts of up to 100 miles per hour are possible around the hills and coasts of the Irish Sea as well as southwest Scotland.
Some forecast models suggested gusts up to 120 m.p.h. for the west coast of the Republic of Ireland, equivalent to the sustained wind speeds of a Category 3 hurricane.
By early Friday, the storm had already brought record winds to the Irish coast. At 5 a.m., a gust of 114 miles per hour was recorded at Mace Head, County Galway, beating a previous national record of 113 m.p.h. set in 1945.
The winds have been so strong that they have apparently disrupted some efforts to report them: “Severe winds have interrupted data supply from our stations in Belmullet, Mace Head and Markree,” Met Eireann, the Irish weather service, said on social media.
ESB Networks, a state-owned power company, said Friday morning that “extreme, damaging and destructive” winds had caused widespread disruption to Ireland’s electricity network.
More than 560,000 customers were without power as of 6 a.m., it said. That is almost a quarter of the around 2.4 million total customers ESB Networks lists on its website.
The intensity of Storm Eowyn prompted the United Kingdom’s Meteorological Office to issue its most severe red wind warnings for Northern Ireland and central and southwest Scotland. It warned of “very dangerous conditions with widespread disruptions and significant impacts.” This is the first red wind warning issued for Northern Ireland since the Met Office moved to impact-based warnings in 2011.
Paul Gundersen, a chief meteorologist at the Met Office said, “We reserve the issuing of red warnings for the most severe weather which represents a likely danger to life and severe disruption, and that is the case with Storm Eowyn.”
The Irish meteorological service issued equivalent top-level wind warnings for the whole country on Friday.
Rain is also expected, as well as snow in the hills of Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland.
The Met Office has been naming impactful storms since 2015 with its storm-naming partners Met Eireann, the Irish weather service, and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute during the autumn and winter seasons. This storm’s name was chosen by the Dutch weather service, which took suggestions from members of the public.
The stark temperature contrast created by the arctic blast that has gripped the United States in recent days and the warm moist air in the Gulf of Mexico intensified the jet stream, a high altitude current of fast moving air that drives global weather patterns west to east, and often plays an active part in Britain’s weather.
The speed of the jet stream is usually between 190 to 220 miles per hour, but this week it strengthened to around 260 m.p.h. This strengthening has deepened Storm Eowyn rapidly in the Atlantic, steering it toward Britain and Ireland with heightened ferocity. The last time Britain experienced a storm of this strength was at the start of December with Storm Darragh, which was also influenced by a strong jet stream. Wind speeds for that storm reached 93 m.p.h. in Wales.
The jet stream is also known for powering trans-Atlantic flights, which pilots sometimes use to speed up journeys and save on fuel. On Wednesday, the ground speed of a flight from Las Vegas to London hit 814 m.p.h., close to the subsonic speed record of 835 m.p.h., which was set by a flight from New York to Lisbon last February.
In the United States this week, the bitter arctic air mass plunged much of the country into dangerously cold conditions, delivering record-breaking low temperatures not seen in decades, and life-threatening wind chills.
Eowyn is expected to clear into the Norwegian Sea on Saturday, allowing a brief lull of drier and calmer conditions for the day. Another storm system is forecast to bring similar hazards for Britain on Sunday and Monday.
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