Country battered by Storm Ophelia

WINDS of more than 80mph battered Scotland overnight as Storm Ophelia made its way through the British Isles.

A yellow warning remained in place by the MET Office today in Scotland, with the public told to brace themselves for travel delays and possible power outages.

Experts from British Weather Services said while the West Coast of Scotland was more severely affected than elsewhere in Scotland, gusts of 83mph were recorded at Cairnwell Weather Station in Perthshire and of 73mph in Glenogil in Angus.

The spokesman said Tayside and Fife had avoided the worst of the storm but commuters in the region have been affected. The Tay Road Bridge was closed to double-decker buses around 12.30am, and a 30mph speed restriction put in place.

By 2.30am only cars were allowed to cross.

Those restrictions remained at the time of going to press today. A spokeswoman for the bridge said that a gust of 81mph was recorded overnight.

All rail routes through Fife were suspended after a tree brought down in the storm was struck by an engineering train.

A ScotRail spokesman said the tree needed to be cleared, and a train provided to haul the engineering train away before services could resume.

Customers were told they could use their tickets on Stagecoach buses between Inverkeithing and Dundee.

Meanwhile, firefighters from Dundee’s Blackness Fire Station were called out to a property in Park Avenue around 6.45pm last night, to remove a piece of masonry which became dislodged.

A cherry-picker was used to safely remove the coping stone from the tenement roof, with no further damage.

The Republic of Ireland and Northern was hit by the worst of the weather in the British Isles yesterday.

Three people are now confirmed to have died in the storm which brought gusts of more than 100mph.

One man was killed in Ravensdale, near Dundalk, when a car he was in was struck by a tree. Another man died in an accident involving a chainsaw.

A female driver in her fifties was killed when a tree fell on her car in Co Waterford.

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