Thousands without power locally as Storm Éowyn strikes

A couple of thousand homes are without power in the wider Athlone area this morning as the region grapples with the impact of Storm Éowyn.

Reports are coming in of power outages in areas including the east of Athlone town, Coosan, Blyry and Coosan.

There are also reports of trees down on the Roscommon Road, near the Train Station in Athlone and close to the slip road at Exit 10 on the M6.

As of 8am, the highest gust recorded at Mullingar Weather Station this morning was 108km/h with average wind speeds of 44km/h.

Across Westmeath, it's estimated that 15,000 homes are without power.

The worst of the winds in this region appeared to precede the start of the red warning at 6am.

The red warning remains in place until 11am in the midlands.

Nationally, at 8am ESB was reporting widespread and extensive damage to the electricity network across the country with over 715,000 homes, farms and businesses without power.

With Met Éireann Status Red and Orange wind warnings remaining in place for the entire country until later this afternoon, significantly more power outages can be expected throughout the day as the storm tracks northwards. Even at current numbers, the damage to the electricity network and impact on customers has been unprecedented.

ESB said from its experience of previous significant weather events and due to the severity of Storm Éowyn, it expects that power restoration will take a significant number of days.

Given the extent of the damage nationwide estimated restoration times will only be provided once ESB teams have assessed network faults and these will then be available to view throughout Saturday on www.PowerCheck.ie.

ESB said its Customer Contact Centre Agents will be supporting customers throughout Storm Éowyn but will not be in a position to provide outage information until the network assessment has been fully conducted.