Woman killed as storm blows caravan off cliff in Ireland
LONDON -- A woman died after a caravan she was sleeping in was blown off a cliff in Ireland. Irish police said the accident occurred in Galway County on Wednesday morning as the British Isles were battered by a heavy storm.
"A search was carried out at the scene on the beach and after a short time the body of a female in her 50s was recovered," police said.
Later Wednesday, police said an engineer who was working for the Northern Ireland Water utility was killed. The engineer died in an incident that involved a tree, Reuters reported.
The storm, dubbed Ali, has also left more than 100,000 homes and businesses without power. It is the U.K.'s first named storm of the season, BBC News reports.
The mass of cloud on the left image is #StormAli still developing as we speak. This is bringing some very heavy rain across Northern Ireland and western Scotland which can be seen on the right image pic.twitter.com/KCzfWcxX9x
— Met Office (@metoffice) September 19, 2018
BBC weather presenter Matt Taylor said the storm could have a greater impact because of the time of year it has hit the U.K. He said most trees were still in full leaf and were "acting like sails," making it more likely they could be pulled over and cause travel problems.
The storm also caused disruptions to rail, road and ferry traffic across Scotland.
In the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, a section of one of the main city thoroughfares, Princes Street, had to be closed after parts of a shop roof were torn off by the strong winds.
In some places, winds of around 90 mph were recorded.
British media also reported several cases of high winds toppling trees, in some cases onto cars.