LONDON — Tens of thousands of homes were without power on Saturday, a day after a severe storm pummeled parts of Britain and northern Europe, killing at least eight people, damaging buildings and causing major travel disruptions across the region.
The storm, named Eunice by Britain’s weather service, led British authorities to issue a rare weather safety warning for London. On Saturday, train services were scrambling to accommodate travelers who had been stranded in city because of the storm. Rain and more winds were expected over the weekend, hindering recovery efforts.
Fierce gusts on Friday toppled trees and sent debris flying, killing at least three in Britain and Ireland.
A woman in her 30s died in London after a tree fell on the car she was in, the Metropolitan Police Service said in a statement. A man in his 50s was killed in Netherton, England, when debris struck the windshield of a vehicle he was in, the Merseyside Police said in a statement. And a man who worked for Wexford County Council in southeast Ireland, who was helping to clear debris from the storm, was struck and killed by a falling tree, according to a statement from the council.
Britain’s weather service, the Met Office, said a wind gust of 122 miles per hour was recorded on Friday on the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England.
A so-called yellow weather warning for strong winds remained in place until early Saturday evening for parts of southern Britain, with similar yellow warnings expected to be in effect at times through Monday.
“Winds will decrease from their exceptionally high levels on Friday, but there’s a continued wet and windy theme for many through the weekend,” Steve Ramsdale, a chief meteorologist at the Met Office, said in a statement on Friday.
In the southeast and east of England, more than 500,000 households experienced power outages that were eventually restored, U.K. Power Networks said in a statement on Saturday, adding that more than 60,000 homes remained without power as of 4 p.m. local time.
Farther north, Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks said it had restored power to more than 120,000 homes, with almost 60,000 still without power on Saturday morning.
Travel disruptions continued on Saturday, with the National Rail advising on its website of “major disruptions,” and the Stansted Express closing its route to London Stansted Airport, northeast of the city, “until further notice” because of damages from the storm.
Two of London’s other airports, Gatwick and Heathrow, said on Saturday that operations had mostly returned to normal, according to the BBC. On Friday, planes at Heathrow Airport wobbled precariously as pilots tried to land them.
The storm caused similar chaos across other parts of northern Europe.
More than 200 flights were canceled on Friday at airports across the region, with the most cancellations at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, according to FlightAware, a flight-tracking website.
At least three people were killed by falling trees in the Netherlands, according to a statement by the Amsterdam-Amstelland Fire Brigade. And in the country’s north, a person was killed after he drove his car into a fallen tree, according to The Associated Press.
In Belgium, a 79-year-old British man died after he fell from his boat at a marina in Ypres, after strong winds knocked him into the water, according to Reuters. And in Germany, the storm system prompted severe weather warnings in parts of the country, according to the German Weather Service.
Eunice comes just after another storm, Dudley, knocked out power across parts of Britain and northern Europe and sent waves crashing through a ferry in Hamburg, Germany, causing damage.
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