AI image LONDON: One person died after a tree fell in England following record winds brought by Storm Goretti, UK police said, and about 40,000 homes were without power in France on Saturday. Nearly 15 people have died in weather-related accidents across Europe this week, as gale force winds and storms disrupted travel, closed schools and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people in freezing temperatures. The storm passed over south-western Cornwall and parts of Wales overnight from Thursday to Friday.
The gust, with winds of up to 160 kilometers per hour (100 mph), downed trees and left thousands of homes without power. A man was found dead in the town of Helston, Cornwall, on Friday after a tree fell on a caravan, Devon and Cornwall Police said in a statement. The Met Office’s national weather agency said much of Britain is under weather warnings for snow and ice on Saturday.
It warned that black snow could cause “disruption” in Scotland and northern England. Heavy snowfall following the storm meant around 250 schools in Scotland remained closed for most of the first week after the Christmas holidays. About 28,000 homes were still without power at the start of the weekend in south-western England and the Midlands, according to network operator National Grid.
Storm Goretti also struck other parts of Northern Europe, some at its peak. 380,000 homes in France are without electricity. But as of 6:00 p.
m. local time (1700 GMT), the number of households left in the dark was less than 40,000, according to the country’s grid operator. In northern Germany, long-distance rail traffic gradually resumed on Saturday, after being completely suspended on Friday due to another storm named Ellie, Deutsche Bahn said.
In the far north of the country, the port city of Hamburg, where large amounts of snowfall fell, was particularly disrupted, it said. Many rail services will also not be restored on Saturday, particularly services connecting Hamburg with Copenhagen, Amsterdam and Hanover. It said services from Hamburg to the western Ruhr region or Berlin were expected to be restored by Saturday.