Scottish isles left without power after 90mph gales

THOUSANDS of homes have been left without power after 90mph winds battered parts of the country overnight.
Waves crash on to the shoreline in Helensburgh. Picture: PAWaves crash on to the shoreline in Helensburgh. Picture: PA
Waves crash on to the shoreline in Helensburgh. Picture: PA

The strongest gusts were recorded in South Uist late yesterday and into the early hours of this morning, with properties in Skye, Sutherland and Wick also affected.

At the height of the problems more than 14,000 customers lost electricity but around 10,000 have been reconnected, Scottish Hydro said.

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The Met Office issued yellow “be aware” weather warning yesterday for wind and rain

Scottish Hydro expect all customers who have lost power to have in restored today and engineers also hope to be able to travel to Colonsay via ferry or helicopter to restore the 14 customers who lost power yesterday morning. High winds meant there was no transport to the island.

Rodney Grubb, head of operations at Scottish Hydro, said: “We were well prepared for the high winds and took the opportunity to move engineers to the areas we knew would be affected.

“Our network has stood up well to this latest weather event and we expect all of our customers to be back on power by later today. We’re hopeful that we’ll get to areas today which were inaccessible yesterday due to the high winds, repair any damage to the network and restore power to all of our customers.”

Winds of 60mphs swept large parts of the central belt last night but conditions are expected to improve throughout today.

Met Office spokeswoman Nicola Maxey said: “Through the morning the conditions will ease up but it’s still going to be quite blustery and there will still be some showers around.

“By the time you get through to mid morning and lunch time most of the showers will have dried up and it will be quite a dry afternoon with some sunshine and breaks in the cloud.”

The weather also affected transport yesterday with bridges closed and ferry and train schedules cancelled.

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Many of Caledonian MacBrayne’s sailings were unable to leave port while ScotRail announced the suspension of a

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