Storm Darragh Leaves Thousands Of Midlands Homes Without Power

Saturday, 7 December 2024 11:38

Strong winds have left people across Laois, Offaly, and Westmeath without power.

Thousands of homes and businesses have been left without power across the midlands after Storm Darragh made landfall in Ireland last night.

There just under 19,000 premises experience faults across Westmeath, Laois and Offaly.

Those in Westmeath have been most affected with 8,008 customers without power.

There's 6,163 in Laois, and 4,809 in Offaly.

The majority of the faults in the region occurred between midnight and 1am.

ESB crews are working to reconnect customers but are currently unable to provide reconnection times.

They're warning people it may take until Sunday to fully restore power across the country:

ESB Networks crews and partner contractors have been deployed since early morning to assess the damage of Storm Darragh, make the network safe and restore electricity supply in challenging conditions. All ESB Networks teams are mobilised and are continuing to closely monitor the storm impact on power supplies.

From our experience of previous significant weather events and due to the severity of Storm Darragh, we expect that power restoration will take multiple days. Significant numbers of impacted customers will have their power restored throughout today but restoration efforts will take a number of days and it is likely that the areas worst affected will take longer.

Still 325,000 without power as of 11:30am as ESB crews continue to work. Remember the 5pm restoration times are mainly because crews have not yet assessed the outage. Wind still strong but slowly easing with scattered showers. pic.twitter.com/lDGaeXWquy
— Carlow Weather (@CarlowWeather) December 7, 2024

The midlands was under an orange strong wind warning from 10pm last night, until 10am this morning.

A yellow status wind warning remains in place for the entire country until 3pm today.

The weather is expected to clear from mid-afternoon onwards.

Storm Darragh will continue to bring very windy conditions🍃 before easing later this afternoon.

Rain🌧️ will clear from the NW & E this afternoon with scattered showers following for the rest of the day, mainly over the W🌦️.

Highest temperatures🌡️ of 6 to 9 degrees. pic.twitter.com/4r3NVFrYHy
— Met Éireann (@MetEireann) December 7, 2024