Storm Boelo leaves over 40,000 homes without power in Ireland

More than 40,000 homes, farms and businesses were left without power in Ireland's west and northwest on Sunday as Storm Boelo battered the country with gusts of up to 133km/h, grid operator ESB Networks said, according to the Irish Mirror.

Around 41,000 premises, mainly in the northwest, were affected, with ESB Networks warning that further outages were possible while weather warnings remained in place. The top gusts overnight were 133kph at Mace Head and 120kph on the north coast, meteorologist Alan O'Reilly of Carlow Weather said.

A status orange wind alert for Donegal expired on Sunday morning and was replaced by a status yellow warning; Leitrim, Galway, Mayo and Sligo had also been under orange wind warnings. Fallen trees and debris were reported on roads in Donegal, while Leitrim reported some fallen trees but escaped major damage, the Irish Mirror said.

ESB Networks said crews had been deployed to all affected areas to carry out restoration work where it was safe to do so, and expected power to be restored to most customers by Sunday evening.

Dublin Airport said strong winds would continue to affect flight operations on Sunday, with 12 inbound and 12 outbound flights cancelled, mainly due to weather issues in other countries; it warned of possible further disruption as wind warnings remained in place into the afternoon.

Storm Boelo, the second named storm to hit Ireland within a week, followed Storm Austen and brought heavy rain on top of already saturated ground, high river levels and weakened trees. The Dublin Marathon went ahead on Sunday despite the conditions as weather cleared in the capital.

Keith Leonard, head of the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management, thanked local teams across the country who worked through the weekend to prepare for storms Austen and Boelo, mitigate their effects and remedy the damage afterwards, adding that work was continuing, particularly in the northwest, to help those affected.