Storm Jocelyn to bring fresh gust of chaos
After Storm Isha caused fatal crashes and lengthy air travel detours, second spell of bad weather looms
STORM Jocelyn spells a second day of travel chaos only a day after Storm Isha wracked the UK with 99 mph winds, leaving three dead and nearly a hundred flights diverted.
One 35-minute trip to Dublin from Manchester Airport became the longhaul flight from hell as it was diverted via Paris, narrowly avoiding a second pitstop in Cologne and altogether taking 11 hours.
Scottish commuters also saw their plans in disarray after Network Rail announced a “controlled shutdown” of trains across the country will be in place from 7pm today as a precaution against the oncoming storm.
Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister, warned Storm Jocelyn, named after the astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, is “likely to cause more disruption, with strong winds buffeting infrastructure and rain falling on already saturated ground”.
Almost 40,000 people in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland were left without power last night and many rail and air passengers faced cancellations and lengthy delays following Storm Isha on Sunday.
Two people died in separate crashes with fallen trees on the road, one an 84-year-old man in Fife, Scotland, and another a man in his 60s in Limavady, Northern Ireland.
A third man died in Queensbury, Bradford, after reportedly falling into an exposed manhole in the road when strong winds blew the barriers away. West Yorkshire Police said the death was not being treated as suspicious and that a file was being prepared for the coroner.
Another man, aged 26, was left in critical condition after two cars crashed into a tree on a road in Cramlington, Northumberland.
A number of people were also rescued by firefighters from flooded roads in the Yorkshire Dales.
Meanwhile, more than 80 flights to UK airports were forced to divert to continental airports on Monday, according to analysis from Flight Radar 24, the plane-tracking site.
Declan Cassidy, a passenger on the Dublin-bound Ryanair flight FR555 on Sunday afternoon, had been in Manchester with his sister, Martine, for a funeral. He said: “We knew there was a storm, but everything seemed to be going quite smoothly before we began descending into Dublin. That was when things got ropey.
“We were being tossed left and right and up and down, and we could see other planes in the airspace going in similar patterns – we were just going round and round in circles. Below us, we could see the Irish Sea getting torn up, it was really choppy.”
When landing in the Irish capital proved impossible and was eventually aborted, passengers groaned as the pilot informed them that they would be returning to Manchester.
Before long, they were told there was no room left in Manchester and they were being diverted to the East Midlands, prompting even bigger groans.
They were eventually told that East Midlands was no longer an option and that they were off to Paris.
Once in France, passengers were given the option to disembark, or stay on board for a second landing attempt into Dublin. All except three decided to try to return to Dublin, but they were warned that if the second attempt to land failed they would be changing direction again – this time to Cologne, in Germany.
After 11 hours, Ryanair flight FR555 touched down on Irish soil. Mr Cassidy and his sister arrived home more than 12 hours after they originally thought.