(London) The United Kingdom was preparing Sunday to undergo a wave of “arctic” frost overnight, the day after a powerful storm that killed three people and deprived thousands of people of electricity in Scotland.
Forecasters from the Met Office, the UK’s meteorological agency, have warned that temperatures could drop to minus 10 ° C overnight in parts of the country, due to an “arctic blast” moving from there. ‘Scotland to the south.
Even London could see the mercury drop below zero, warned analysts, who issued a “cold” alert for the whole weekend as a result, urging the public to take frost precautions.
But the country is still struggling to fully recover from the storm Arwen, whose gusts to nearly 160 km / h Friday and Saturday resulted in the death of three people, each killed by a falling tree, and put many trains and trucks at a standstill.
Arwen has since weakened in the UK, and moved to mainland Europe. But the heavy snowfall that followed led to the cancellation of the football match between two Premier League clubs Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday.
In Scotland, some 45,000 people are still without electricity, said the Scottish Southern and Electricity Network (SSEN) company, which recorded more than 100,000 cuts during the night from Friday to Saturday.
According to Mark Rough, director of operations at SSEN, the damage caused by high winds fromArwen are three times greater than those generated by the impressive cold spell that hit the country in February 2018.
“Our teams are responding to some of the most serious and difficult situations that these regions have known for decades,” he said, warning that many customers may not see their electricity restored “for several days”.