| People view large waves and high winds associated with Storm Eleanor as they hit the lighthouse and seawall at Porthcawl in south Wales on Wednesday |
A storm disrupted air traffic at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on Wednesday, with many flights cancelled or delayed.
Airlines cancelled 176 out of a total of more than 1,200 incoming and outgoing flights on Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Dutch national airport said.
That number was expected to rise, as the storm would grow stronger during the day, with wind gusts reaching speeds of up to 120 kph (75 mph).
Flights that were not cancelled faced an average delay of about an hour, the airport said.
Schiphol is Europe’s third busiest airport in number of total passengers per year, after London
Heathrow and Paris Charles de Gaulle.
Meanwhile in Ireland homes and business on the country’s west coast suffered flood damage and 27,000 were still without electricity on Wednesday after Storm Eleanor brought heavy rain and winds of up to 155 kilometres per hour.
The storm hit Ireland’s fourth largest city, Galway, particularly hard as high tides late on Tuesday forced road closures and wreaked havoc for shop owners.
Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board (ESB) said at one stage on Tuesday 150,000 homes and business were without electricity.
“We’re really hopeful, given that it’s the last week of a lot of people’s Christmas holidays, that we will have power back to pretty much everybody by tonight,” Derek Hynes, Operations Manager for ESB, told national broadcaster RTE.
The weather service’s second highest level of alert remained in place for the west and northwest of the country. Met Eireann said a combination of high tides and exceptionally high seas would result in coastal damage and further flooding.