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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Nadeem Badshah (now) and Ben Quinn (earlier)

Storm Ciara: travel chaos and floods amid warning of 'danger to life' – as it happened

A car is seen submerged as flood water covers the roads in Mytholmroyd, northern England as Storm Ciara brought winds, gales and torrential rain.
A car is seen submerged as flood water covers the roads in Mytholmroyd, northern England as Storm Ciara brought winds, gales and torrential rain. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

Sunday's developments

  • Some 539,000 people experienced a power cut on Sunday with 118,000 left without power by 4pm across the whole of the UK, according to Energy Networks.
  • Train passengers are being advised to check with operators before travelling as there are likely to be some cancellations to early trains as Network Rail engineers work through the night to assess the damage.
  • Motorists are also warned to take care with continued disruption to the road network and tricky driving conditions likely to continue into rush hour.
  • British Airways said there will be a “minor knock-on effect” to Monday’s schedule.
  • Sporting fixtures were postponed including Manchester City’s Premier League game against West Ham and England’s women’s Six Nations match against Scotland in Glasgow.
  • More than 200 flood warnings were issued across England on Sunday, with the town of Appleby-in-Westmorland, in Cumbria, severely hit.
  • The River Irwell burst its banks at Radcliffe, Greater Manchester, while areas including Blackpool, Whalley, Longton and Rossendale, were affected by flooding in Lancashire.
  • The fastest gusts of 97 miles per hour were recorded on the Isle of Wight on Sunday, with 93 miles per hour winds hitting Aberdaron, a village at the tip of the Llyn Peninsula.
  • Inland, Manchester Airport recorded gusts of 86 miles per hour, while 178mm of rain fell in Honister Pass, in Cumbria, in the 24 hours to 4pm on Sunday - around one-and-a-half times the average February rainfall of 112mm.

Updated

British Airways said in a statement there will be a “minor knock-on effect” to Monday’s schedule.

“We’re getting in touch with those affected, and have brought in extra customer teams to help them with a range of options including a full refund or an alternative flight between now and Thursday,” the airline said.

“Any customer flying short-haul to or from Heathrow or Gatwick, can also choose to make changes to their travel plans if they would prefer to fly another time.”

Monday’s Guardian front page -

Newhaven Harbour features again on the Times front page -

Monday’s Mirror front page -

The Express’s front -

The Telegraph’s splash -

Monday’s City AM front -

The Independent’s front page -

Images from Storm Ciara dominate the majority of Monday’s front pages. Here is the Metro’s offering:

Luton Station’s car park will be closed on Monday -

Surrey Police are dealing with this road traffic accident on the A31 in Farnham -

There have been over 30 incidents of trees and other debris falling down on railway lines operated by Southeastern Trains today -

Southeastern Trains has tweeted that disruption is very likely on routes through Swanley and to/from London Victoria on Monday.

It has advised commuters to check before travelling and be prepared for some disruption.

Updated

Firefighters are at Harrods to deal with the aftermath of Storm Ciara on the department store building in west London.

Updated

These London Overground trains have been cancelled on Monday morning due to the adverse weather conditions:

  • 5.13am Watford Junction to London Euston
  • 5.37am London Euston to Watford Junction
  • 5.54am Richmond to Stratford
  • 6.02am Willesden Junction to Richmond
  • 5.32am Highbury & Islington to West Croydon

An update from Gatwick Airport on flight delays -

Some number-crunching from Storm Ciara courtesy of the Met Office -

In the north-east, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, 67,300 properties suffered blackouts as the storm raged.

By 7.30pm on Sunday Northern PowerGrid, the energy supplier, had restored power to around 55,600 customers.

The majority of disruption was due to the wind and associated debris impacting its overhead network, the firm said.

Updated

The latest flood warnings for south-west England.

Updated

Best to have an umbrella and a heavily insulated coat with you this evening..

The Environment Agency has issued the following advice:

Services west of Swansea and west Wales are likely to be disrupted on Monday.

Charity fund-raiser ‘Speedo Mick’ has braved the storm and freezing temperatures to continue his walk across the country.

The amber warning for wind in places across much of England and Wales until 9pm means that damage to buildings, travel disruption and power cuts are expected. Yellow weather warnings cover the whole of the UK until midnight.

The Met Office meteorologist Alex Burkill said the size of the amber warning was very unusual, and showed how widespread the impact of Storm Ciara would be.

He said: “It’s not just coastal parts which are likely to see gusts of 70-80mph, but even inland areas, which don’t usually see those strengths of wind.”

Burkill added the winds, combined with heavy rain would cause significant problems around the country.

More than 100mm of rain has fallen in some parts of northern England and north Wales.

Updated

Strong winds forced a British Airways flight at Heathrow to abort its landing seconds after touching down on the runway.

A video posted on social media showed the BA plane struggling to land during Storm Ciara.

The airline said the aircraft went on to land safely after circling the airport.

The public has been asked to report any precarious trees, garden furniture or trampolines that could be blown away on to the railway.

A Network Rail spokesman said: “In particularly windy weather, our lineside neighbours are asked to help keep the railway free of any unexpected debris by tying down or clearing away garden furniture such as trampolines.”

Updated

A high-speed train collided with a tree in Scotland.

Storm Ciara is expected to clear by tonight but it will remain wet and windy across the UK tomorrow, the Met Office said.

Updated

Water levels now falling in Pateley Bridge, Yorkshire.

Western Power Distribution says 12,779 of its customers in the East and West Midlands, the south-west and south Wales do not have any electricity.

In the UK, about 118,000 people overall were without power as of 4pm, according to Energy Networks.

Energy companies said they had reconnected 421,000 customers since the storm hit and work was continuing to restore electricity to the remaining homes.

Updated

A number of schools in north Wales will be closed on Monday after being damaged in the storm.

Ysgol Dyffryn Conwy in Llanrwst will be shut following flooding, while Ysgol y Creuddyn in Conwy will be closed due to a “significant risk that more slates will fall”, with school officials saying they will re-assess the situation in the morning.

Updated

Footage of a RNLI lifeboat veering through the storm off the coast of Hastings.

A train has been sent to rescue stranded passengers in south-east England.

Southeastern have just tweeted that “the rescue train will be alongside in the next few minutes and passengers will be able to transfer across, and the train will return to Rochester and Faversham.

“A connection will be available at Rochester for St Pancras.”

Updated

The shadow environment secretary, Luke Pollard, has thanked emergency services, the Environment Agency and communities who he said had worked tirelessly to protect homes and businesses, rescue people and animals from rising waters and reinforce flood defences.

He said: “The reality of the climate crisis is that more extreme weather will happen more often and with devastating consequences. Insufficient funds are being spent on protecting the most vulnerable communities from flooding and the consequences of extreme weather.

“Ministers must urgently fund the schemes that these communities say they need as well as put in place longer-term flood prevention strategies with appropriate bodies to prevent flooding and protect homes. The government must act now to protect those communities who are currently underwater, unlike its previous woefully slow response we saw last year.”

Updated

A British Airways plane is believed to have made the fastest ever flight by a conventional airliner from New York to London.

The Boeing 747-436 made the 3,500-mile journey in 4 hours and 56 minutes, helped by strong tailwinds as Storm Ciara blew in.

The BA112 flight, which took off from John F Kennedy airport, was scheduled to land at Heathrow at 6.25am on Sunday but arrived 102 minutes early at 4.43am.

According to flight tracking website Flightradar24, the plane was one minute faster than Virgin Atlantic’s flight VS4 which was due to land around the same time.

The Virgin Airbus A350-1041 made the same flight in four hours and 57 minutes.

BA said: “We always prioritise safety over speed records, but our highly trained pilots made the most of the conditions to get customers back to London well ahead of time.”

Advice from John Curtin, executive director of Flood & Coastal Risk Management at the Environment Agency.

A school in East Sussex has announced it will be closed on Monday after Storm Ciara caused “significant damage” to the school building.

King’s school in Hove will aim to reopen on Tuesday.

A message on its website said: “The high winds from Storm Ciara have caused significant damage to the school building which needs to be made safe by contractors before the school can safely open to students and staff.”

Updated

Platforms 1-6 at London Victoria station are closed due to structural damage.

London Euston station has now reopened after earlier overcrowding.

Part of a cafe and guest house has collapsed into a river due to high winds and heavy rain in Scotland.

Police were called to Bridge House guest house and Sonia’s Bistro in Hawick in the Borders at around 9.30am to reports of structural damage.

Footage posted on social media showed a wall of the building collapsing into the fast-flowing River Teviot leaving the rooms inside exposed.

Emergency services said the building on Sandbed had been evacuated and there were no reports of any injuries.

A police spokesman said: “At around 9.30am on Sunday police in Hawick were made aware of structural damage to the Bridge House guest house. Officers attended and helped the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service at the scene. The building has been evacuated and there are no injuries.”

The Scottish Environment Protection Agency issued 15 flood alerts and 64 flood warnings including several in the Borders.

Updated

The highest wind speed of the day has been recorded at The Needles off the Isle of Wight with gusts of 97mph, the Met Office said.

The golden cliffs of The Needles point on the western most part of the Isle of Wight.
The golden cliffs of The Needles point on the western most part of the Isle of Wight. Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Observer

The Yorkshire Evening Post has tracked down a canoeist spotted paddling down a flooded residential street in Leeds.

Tony Hargreaves, 45, said he had got the dinghy out to “brighten up” his afternoon during the floods.

Footage of him running onto the flooded Gelderd Road before jumping in the dinghy and beginning to row has gone viral.

Gatwick airport warning of flight delays and cancellations:

Updated

In Wales, a beautiful wooden bridge beloved of walkers has been washed away by the storm.

The Miners’ Bridge in Betws-y-Coed, which runs over a tributary of the River Conwy, is no more.

The river is almost at an all-time high.

Updated

In West Yorkshire, the fire service said it attended 106 incidents between 8am and 2.15pm and received 671 emergency calls about flooding in the Calder Valley, Kirklees, Bradford and Leeds.

“The main issues have been around localised flash flooding of small streams and becks, but we have also seen rivers breech in both Calderdale and Bradford districts. There have been some cases of internal domestic properties flooding and there has also been some instances of unsafe structures due to strong winds,” a spokesperson said.

They added: “Whilst the rainfall is now easing, river levels remain extremely high in many areas. We are also expecting another band of rain to move across the county early this evening. Our focus is to continue to protect the community and we ask the public to help us in this by not taking any unnecessary journeys and certainly not attempt driving through floodwater.”

Updated

A crane has been bent over by winds in London “like it’s made of spaghetti”, according to one witness.

Lindsey Wells took a picture of the crane by Stanmore tube station at just after 11am and said two fire engines were in attendance.

The 36-year-old local resident told the Press Association: “[It] looks like it’s made of spaghetti. It’s lucky it wasn’t during the week, as it’s a very busy, big development.”

Updated

Police have cordoned off a part of Woking town centre after reports of debris falling from a building.

A Surrey police spokesman said members of the public were being asked to avoid the area around Enterprise Place while the building is secured.

He said: “We’ve cordoned off an area near Enterprise Place in Woking following reports of debris falling from a building due to the high wind this morning.”

Updated

This just in from the Cumberland & Westmorland Herald, one of the country’s last remaining independent newspapers, which reports that firefighters have rescued a man from a steep riverbank above the flooded River Eden in Appleby, east Cumbria.

The man was rescued from banking opposite the Riverside medical centre and is believed to be uninjured.

Cumbria county council says the bridge over the River Eden in Appleby itself is still closed due to the high water levels. Bridge engineers will carry out a detailed inspection tomorrow once the water levels have dropped.

In Ramsbottom and Bury in Greater Manchester, residents were evacuated from their homes after the River Irwell burst its banks. Castle Leisure centre is operating as a rest centre for anyone needing a place to stay. Pets are welcome, the council says.

In Birmingham, the Sea Life Centre was closed on Sunday afternoon due to a “foreign object” hitting the roof. “All of our creatures, staff and guests are unharmed and safe,” the centre said. Tickets will be refunded or accepted on another day.

Updated

The storm made a different sort of impact on air traffic as it helped flights set records over the course of Saturday night by propelling aircraft across the Atlantic on the back of a jet stream.

A BA Boeing 747 was believed to have set a new subsonic transatlantic flight record after it landed Heathrow in four hours and 56 minutes on Sunday morning. A Virgin Airlines flight operating on the same route made the crossing a little earlier in four hours and 58 minutes, according to the Flightradar24 tracking website.

BA said in a statement: “We always prioritise safety over speed records, but our highly trained pilots made the most of the conditions to get customers back to London well ahead of time.”

Plane spotters and others have been chronicling aborted landing attempts at airports, amid multiple flight cancellations.

If you have the nerve for it, this is from a livestream earlier today of planes landing - or attempting to land - at Heathrow:

Heathrow airport has said it had agreed earlier today with airlines to “consolidate” the flight schedule in an effort to minimise the number of cancelled flights.

British Airways was offering rebooking options for customers on domestic and European flights flying to and from Heathrow, Gatwick and London City, while Virgin Atlantic posted a list of cancelled flights on its website.

Rail companies that have issued warnings against travel today included Gatwick Express, Great Northern, LNER, Northern, Southeastern, Southern, Thameslink, Grand Central Hull Trains and TransPennine Express.

Avanti West Coast, which runs rail services between London and Scotland, took the decision not to run trains north of Preston.

Trampolines are a *thing* meanwhille, with service engineers reporting having found no less than two today

This is quite astonishing footage from Scotland meanwhile, where the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) currently have some 63 flood warnings and 15 flood alerts in place.

Scotland’s transport secretary, Michael Matheson, said: “The Met Office is telling us that we are facing a prolonged period of adverse weather, with Storm Ciara bringing strong winds and rain to most of Scotland this weekend. We’re also being told to expect snow and high winds throughout Monday and on Tuesday morning, so there is the potential for significant disruption on the trunk road network, as well as other modes of transport.”

The emergency services have already been busy and seem set to have a busy evening ahead.

A driver was rescued after their car became stuck in deep floodwater in Blackpool, where the emergency services said they had spent a busy night responding to incidents. In Perth, three people were injured after part of a pub roof collapsed on Saturday evening.

Amanda Owen, a farmer and shepherd in Swaledale, one of the highest and most remote hill farms in England, has posted footage that showed a livestock trailer being swept along by what she described as “a flood of biblical proportions”.

Updated

Images and footage being shared by local people and others give a sense of what only be the beginning of the problems being caused as flood waters over top defences that have been built up in recent years.

This was the sound of morning flood warning sirens being sounded in Hebden Bridge.

Since then, we’ve spoken to local people in the Calder Valley, who told of watching cars being swept away and water engulfing flood defences that have been built up over the past four years to the tune of tens of millions of pounds since major flooding in Christmas 2015

“When we got up this morning it was evidently flooding form 8 to 9am but within an hour or two the river was about to breach its banks and abandoned cars were being swept away,” I was told by Ben Myers, an author in the town who has written about the impact of flooding.

“It’s really quite bad now and it looks certain that scores of businesses will have to shut here and in Hebden. So much was spent and so many promises were made in the past but it feels like there will have to be another rethink.”

A man checks his phone as flood water covers the roads and car parks in Mytholmroyd, northern England, on February 9, 2020, after the River Calder burst its bank
A man checks his phone as flood water covers the roads and car parks in Mytholmroyd, northern England, on February 9, 2020, after the River Calder burst its bank Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

Updated

This is the Guardian’s liveblog coverage of the hurricane-force winds and rain which have rocked Britain’s transport network and caused widespread flooding that is being categorised in some areas as presenting a threat to life.

Storm Ciara is bringing fresh misery to communities that have suffered particularly badly in the past in the north of England, such as Yorkshire’s Calder Valley.

The Environment Agency has issued a severe flood warning, meaning there is a danger to life, for the River Nidd at Pateley Bridge and Bewerley, in North Yorkshire.

There are also currently 214 flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected and immediate action is required, and 177 alerts, indicating flooding is possible.

Amid heavy rain and winds of more than 80mph, transport links are also being disrupted amid multiple cancellations to flights, ferry crossings and train services.

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