Storm Barra: Weather warnings for most of UK as gales and snow hit

Strong winds, heavy rain and snow have hit parts of the UK, as Storm Barra sweeps across the country.

Most of the UK was covered by severe yellow weather warnings on Tuesday - with only the far north of Scotland escaping the worst weather.

Gales and blizzards have been reported, with wind gusts reaching 86mph at Aberdaron in Gwynedd.

About 3,200 homes in north-east Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales have lost power.

But Storm Barra is not expected to be as bad as its predecessor, Arwen, which hit the UK 11 days ago and left thousands of homes without electricity.

About 360 homes are still without power in the North East of England, an area in the path of the new storm.

Flood warnings have been issued in 28 places across the UK for Wednesday, including in Sunderland, Bournemouth, Aberystwyth and Orkney.

The Met Office weather warnings included a yellow warning for wind covering all of England and Wales, as well as south-west and east Scotland, which ended at midnight.

A yellow warning of heavy snow for inland areas of Scotland also until midnight that also lasted until midnight.

A yellow warning for wind for parts of south and south-west England, as well as the east coast and south of Wales is still in place - lasting until 18:00 GMT on Wednesday.

As Storm Barra swept in from the Atlantic earlier on Tuesday, strong winds with gusts of up to 80mph were recorded in the Republic of Ireland. Schools closed across 12 counties in Ireland and 49,000 homes and businesses were without power.

And in Northern Ireland, about 5,500 homes lost power due to damage to the network - with 1,500 still in the dark as of Tuesday evening.

A further 270 homes are still without power across Wales, and ferries and trains have been cancelled.

The storm left 1,700 homes without power in parts of Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire and also caused school closures and delays across the transport network.

A Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks spokesman said: "We are re-routing the network to restore customer supplies quickly where possible, and all faults will be worked on this evening and into the night."

Snow has already fallen in northern England and southern Scotland.

High winds damaged the roof of a school in Stranraer, while a fallen tree blocked the A702 road in South Lanarkshire. Four schools also shut in Dumfries and Galloway.

The storm is set to continue eastwards, with travel disruption, power outages and large waves in coastal areas possible, the Met Office said.

BBC Weather said snow could be an issue across the north of the Pennines and across parts of Scotland, with up to 20cm of snow possible in the Grampians and between 2cm (1in) and 10cm (4in) elsewhere.

"It will be cold and windy across the UK, the main thing is the winds and snow and rain," forecaster Matt Taylor said. "The only area that escapes the worst of it is northern Scotland."

On Tuesday, Boris Johnson said the UK had not had a storm as violent as Storm Arwen, which hit in late November, for a long time.

Asked whether it was acceptable for people to be without power for as long as they had been, he replied: "No I don't think it is. Too many people have spent too long without power.""I think that we need to learn the lessons for the future and make sure that we have better resilience against storms of this kind. It's likely to happen again, we've got to make sure we protect people against it," he said.

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