Hurricane-force winds hit Jersey as Storm Ciarán battered southern England and Europe, with seven deaths reported on the Continent.
Force-12 gusts were recorded in Jersey, with the island’s weather service saying the “hurricane-force” winds struck at about 4.30am on Thursday. Residents were asked to avoid outdoor activities as they braced themselves for destruction not seen since the great storm of 1987.
The storm-related deaths occurred in Spain, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Two men in northern France were killed when a tree fell on a truck, and a man fell to his death from his balcony in record-breaking winds.
In the UK, a former Environment Agency manager, Dave Throup, said Britons had “dodged a bullet”. He said that if Storm Ciarán had tracked 150 miles further north, as forecast by some models, “much of southern England would be waking up to catastrophic damage”.
• Scotland’s October the wettest since records began
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Three people in the Channel Islands were taken to hospital and 84 had to leave their storm-damaged homes. A street running alongside the island’s hospital was shut with the police citing concerns for the hospital roof. Jersey airport and ports were due to remain closed on Friday after the storm caused extensive damage.
Three yellow weather warnings were in place in Britain, with one alert for rain in the northwest of the UK staying in place until Friday morning. The yellow warning in the south of England stretched from Norwich to Cornwall.
The Met Office said there would continue to be a possible “danger to life” in affected areas, caused by fast-flowing or deep floodwater. Very strong winds could also blow down power lines and cause structural damage, with flying debris disrupting travel and posing a danger to life, the forecaster said.
A student in Falmouth, Cornwall, described how the roof of her attic bedroom was torn up at 5.30am. Katie Marsh said she woke up screaming and covered in debris. She said the ordeal was “terrifying”, telling the BBC: “Our roof completely blew off and collapsed into my room on top of me. I think most of the roof is gone now. I was screaming quite loudly — it was very shocking.”
More than 100 highway incidents were responded to in Somerset alone on Wednesday night, with highway teams having to help vehicles in trouble due to falling trees and flooded roads.
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In Hampshire, where the storm had been declared a major incident amid fears of a “potential risk to life”, a man was taken to hospital after his car fell 150ft down an embankment after driving through a 4ft of water. It took 16 firefighters about 45 minutes in the dark to release the trapped man, who had raised the alarm on his mobile phone
The rail operators Southern, Thameslink and Southeastern were advising people to work from home if they could. LNER warned commuters to expect disruption until at least Saturday, with customers advised to “avoid travel by train during this period”. Services between London Paddington and Exeter St David, Plymouth and Penzance have been cancelled as a result of the line closure.
In Sussex, about 1,500 homes were left without power on Thursday and more than 10,000 properties in Cornwall were cut off from the grid in the early hours. Hundreds of schools also remained closed from Suffolk to Devon.
A “major incident” was declared in Southampton last night with Southern Water confirming thousands of households were left without running water. They expected more households to be affected by the morning. Four sites across the city, providing affected residents with bottled water, were set to reopen at 8am on Friday morning.
A spokesman for the water company said the extreme rain had pushed an “extraordinary” amount of mud and debris into the River Itchen, meaning their water processors were “struggling to function in a normal way”.
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By the weekend, the Met Office expects to see some sunny spells and only light winds across most of the country with a yellow weather warning for rain remaining only in a small area in southern coastal areas of England until Saturday night.
The wild weather came after the UK had its joint sixth wettest October on record. The Met Office said England had its eighth wettest on record with 147.2mm of rain, 63 per cent more than average. Northern Ireland had its fifth wettest October on record with 191.8mm, 68 per cent more than its average.
Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire, the Isle of Wight and some counties in the east of Scotland provisionally recorded their wettest Octobers on record.
