James Woodbine was woken up by Storm Darragh at 5am, roughly the time the power cut began. His 300-year-old cottage is at the top of a hill in Trofarth in north Wales where yesterday’s winds were fiercest, measured at 93mph nearby in Capel Curig.
“The noise was the strangest thing,” Woodbine said. “There was a thrum coming from the ground, a rumble going through the building whenever there was a gust. I’ve never heard that before. I’ve been here for 30 years and we had Storm Doris come through in 2017, and this is far worse. I’ve never seen a storm like it.”
Woodbine is one of the hundreds of thousands of people across Britain and Ireland who were affected by Storm Darragh, which was so serious that the Met Office issued a red wind warning, alerting people of the threat to life – only the 19th since 2011.
One man in his 40s died after a tree fell on his van as he was driving along a dual carriageway section of the A59 in Longton, near Preston. At 3am, as winds were gathering pace, a Translink airport express bus left the road and hit a wall near Antrim in Northern Ireland, and the driver was taken to hospital.
Photograph: Charles McQuillan/Getty Images
The government reinforced the warning with a siren alert sent to 3m phones in Wales and south-west England on Friday evening, and on Saturday Dyfed-Powys police declared a major incident due to the volume of calls about uprooted trees and other hazards.
As the winds subsided, the rain poured down. Natural Resources Wales issued 27 flood warnings and there were 17 more in England. There were also more than 200 flood alerts where flooding was possible. In Scotland, where an amber warning was in place, there were warnings in the Borders and Tayside.
Most people avoided the roads, but a few took a risk. Woodbine, who runs Woody’s Glamping, a site in the foothills of Snowdonia, said a family with four children had turned up unexpectedly, asking to stay in one of his tents. He put them up in a more secure lodge instead, and they left around 11am yesterday.
“My wife said to them, ‘there’s a warning – please, if you’re leaving, you’re going to have to take it very, very carefully’.”
Traffic cameras showed mostly empty roads yesterday, and even the M25’s “road to hell” section near Heathrow was comparatively quiet – the airport had suffered 83 cancellations by Saturday afternoon, according to Flightaware, a tracking service, with dozens more flights cancelled elsewhere and ferry crossings at Stranraer, the Western Isles, Holyhead and Fishguard also halted. Network Rail listed 14 disruptions to rail services.
People who did venture out found few places to go in the worst affected areas. Events were cancelled and businesses stayed shut after the storm knocked out power. The Energy Networks Association said 177,000 homes in mainland Britain were without electricity yesterday afternoon, and its member networks’ online incident maps showed a sea of dots stretching from Eastbourne on the south coast to Bamburgh in Northumberland.
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London’s 10 royal parks were shut, including the Winter Wonderland attraction. The Merseyside derby between Everton and Liverpool was postponed, while most rugby and football in Wales, as well as football matches in Crawley, Bristol and Plymouth, were cancelled. People visiting some National Trust sites were turned away and councils closed recycling centres. York’s Christmas market was among many cancelled, and Diss in Norfolk postponed switching on its Christmas lights.
Winds will subside, the Met Office said, but Darragh is not done yet. A yellow warning is in place on Sunday across England and Wales, and Woodbine has been warned that power is unlikely to return soon.
“This is going to be 36 hours,” he said. “Normally you get a storm coming through for seven hours or so. We’re pretty exposed.” He could already see the damage from his back window on Saturday afternoon.
“One of the glamping tents has a canvas roof – that’s shredded. I’ve got an old tree, a blackthorn, that’s been pulled out of the ground. Tiles are off the roof. All our bins are gone. We’ve got hot tub lids, which I’ve strapped down because I’ve seen them fly off like frisbees before. They’re hanging on for dear life. But we’ve got another 12 hours of this.”