UK weather: 7,000 homes still without power two days after 90mph Storm Corrie

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Thousands of Britons remained without power today after back-to-back storms wreaked havoc across the country with 90mph winds that damaged buildings, toppled hundreds of trees and knocked out electricity lines.

An estimated 7,000 homes in Scotland were still cut off this morning out of a total of 117,000 who lost power in recent days, while in North East England just 61 remained without electricity out of an original total of 80,000.

The recovery operation has been hampered by the extreme weather which also saw a nine-year-old boy killed by a falling tree in Staffordshire on Saturday while a 60-year-old woman died when a tree hit her in Aberdeen.

Gusts of 92mph were recorded in Scotland during Storm Corrie on Sunday after 93mph Storm Malik on Saturday – and the strong winds also meant the amount of renewable electricity generated by wind reached a new record.

National Grid reported having 19.6GW of wind-generated power on Saturday afternoon – enough to power around ten million homes. At its peak wind power was supplying 66 per cent of the country’s electricity use. 

But there could be more disruption to come today with the Met Office issuing another wind warning for northern Scotland running for 12 hours until 6pm tonight, saying that strong north-westerly winds are expected to develop.

Gusts of up to 50mph are forecast, reaching as high as 65mph across northern Sutherland, Caithness and Orkney. While these speeds are much less than experienced during storms Malik and Corrie, and not unusual for the time of year, the Met Office warned that ‘recently weakened trees and structures could be prone to further damage’.

Forecasters said today and tomorrow would be calmer elsewhere with highs of 13C (55F) in England, 11C (52F) in Wales and 10C (50F) in Scotland before a cold snap on Thursday followed by milder weather this weekend.

Douglas Morrison, 51, who lives two miles from Kemnay, Aberdeenshire, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that he had ‘never seen this level of devastation’ to forest areas.

He added: ‘I’m talking hundreds and hundreds of trees absolutely flattened and snapped like matchsticks.’ He said his house lost power at 8am on Saturday and it came back on for a few hours on Sunday before being cut again.

Further south, Stewart Sexton, from Alnwick in Northumberland, lost power for 35 hours over the weekend, having also been cut off by Storm Arwen in November.

Describing himself as ‘enraged’, the 58-year-old said: ‘It’s all about a lack of maintenance of the infrastructure and no resilience plan from Northern Powergrid. We have had power cuts for 298 hours since November 26.

‘By any reckoning that must be unacceptable and it indicates that there is certainly something wrong with the infrastructure around our communities while neighbouring larger villagers didn’t lose power at all.’  

Meanwhile mountain biker Richard Nutter, 48, cheated death over the weekend when a large tree fell on to his van when he was changing inside after a ride at woods near Bradford.

His friend helped pull him to safety and Mr Nutter, a mechanic, was taken to hospital for a check-up.

He said: ‘Things could have turned out very differently. If I’d been anywhere else in that van, I’d have been crushed for sure. I’m lucky to be alive.’

Elsewhere, a 25-year-old man died following a 200ft fall on a Snowdonia mountain at around midday on Sunday.

Emergency services, including mountain rescue teams, North Wales Police and the coastguard rescue helicopter, were scrambled to the incident on the cliffs of Glyder Fach, on the south side of the Ogwen Valley. 

Rail services between Edinburgh and Newcastle were affected early yesterday and in Scotland buses replaced some train services.

Gusts of 92mph were recorded in both Stornoway on the Western Isles and Inverbervie in Aberdeenshire on Sunday night, while the top speed in England was 69mph at St Bees Head in Cumbria.

Several schools in Aberdeenshire and Northumberland were either closed or delayed the start of school yesterday due to storm problems. 

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said last night that it remained at ‘red alert status’ for northern Scotland as its teams ‘continue to respond to the significant damage’ from the storms.

A total of 117,000 homes in Scotland were cut off during the weekend, with power replaced to almost all of them over the past few days and 16,900 customers remaining off supply as of 8pm yesterday evening. 

SSEN said the main areas which continued to be affected were rural Aberdeenshire and the Angus border, with some customers also off supply in Perthshire, the Highlands, Western Isles and the Moray Coast.

More than 400 additional engineers and support staff were mobilised, and SSEN said its teams ‘aim to reduce the number of customers off supply to around 7,000 overnight’ by this morning.

A spokesman said: ‘Restoration efforts will continue into Tuesday with the possibility that for small clusters of customers affected by Storm Corrie, this may extend into Wednesday – depending on the extent of damage found and the potential impact on safe working conditions in higher winds forecast for Tuesday.’

Richard Gough, director of distribution system operations at SSEN, said: ‘Our teams have continued to make strong progress restoring power to customers impacted by the extreme weather from Storm Malik.

‘Whilst our teams are making every effort to restore customers as soon as possible, the cumulative impact of Storms Malik and Corrie has compounded the restoration challenge.

‘As a result, we are advising customers that while expected restoration of customer supplies from Storm Malik remains Tuesday evening, restoration times for some of those impacted by Storm Corrie may now extend to Wednesday.

‘We would like to apologise to all customers affected and would like to reassure them that all available resources have been deployed to support with restoration efforts and our teams are doing all they can to safely restore power as quickly as possible.

Meanwhile Northern Powergrid said it only had 61 properties to reconnect today and added last night that it was ‘continuing to work into the night to enable the last reconnections to be completed as soon as possible tomorrow’.

Andy Bilclough, its director of field operations, said last night: ‘Our teams have got through a phenomenal amount of work today, which includes reconnecting around 17,000 customers that were impacted by Storm Corrie, and they’re still out there now.

‘Almost all of the work we have left to do is a blend of repair work that we discovered when we got to site, some difficult site conditions that meant we couldn’t complete the work today or where we would have needed access to the property during the night but have agreed with the customer to complete the restoration tomorrow.’

A Northern Powergrid spokesman added that ‘all the work is scheduled and allocated to teams who are ready to complete the work’ today, continuing: ‘We understand that it is frustrating to have been without power for this length of time – we appreciate the continued patience of our customers.

‘We are also grateful to the fantastic teams of people who have worked tirelessly to restore supplies to more than 80,000 customers and to support all those affected.’

The firm insisted it had learned lessons from November’s Storm Arwen, which led to widespread complaints about the way it communicated with customers who had lost power and long delays to restore supplies. 

Deputy First Minister John Swinney told the BBC’s Good Morning Scotland radio programme yesterday that there had been ‘a much stronger join-up between the power companies and local resilience partnerships’.

Meanwhile, rescuers said a hillwalker who got lost climbing 4,295ft Ben Macdui was ‘lucky’ to have been found. More than 20 members of Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Team were mobilised to search for the man on Sunday.