Scots hit by 5,000 lightning strikes

Weather causes chaos while England basks in heatwave

Thunder storms disrupt transport, power and water supplies across the country:

Power, water and transport was disrupted yesterday after stormy weather and thousands of lightning strikes across Scotland.

Orkney was left without power after a lightning strike cut electricity across the whole island for half and hour. And thousands of households across the Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) area in the Highlands

and North East were affected by the strikes hitting power supplies. SSEN said last night: “We currently have around 2,300 customers off supply across our network area.”

The energy firm said it managed to restore supplies before 6pm. Firefighters meanwhile tackled a blaze at an electrical substation in Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire, at about 4pm, while colleagues were called to a house fire nearby .

The power station later said: “The fault was not weather related, but up to 200 homes were affected as Scottish Power engineers worked to correct the situation.”

By 6pm yesterday, more than 5,000 lightning strikes had been recorded across Scotland and northern parts of England. Scottish Water reported that lightning had affected a pump in Perthshire leaving some residents without water.

The weather and signalling issues caused major rail disruption. An electricity failure at Camelon near Falkirk caused train problems. Early evening trains between Glasgow and Aberdeen were affected, with some journeys cancelled due to flooding and trees falling on the line near Stirling. Meanwhile, in southern England temperatures soared to their hottest of the year. The Met Office said Heathrow and Northolt in west London had reached 34C.