UK and Irish Flights cancelled after Storm Eowyn makes landfall 

Numerous UK and Irish Flights have been cancelled, leaving 30,000 passengers with their flight plans wrecked, after Storm Eowyn, registering wind speeds up to 100mph hit the UK,  and wind speeds up to 114mph in Ireland. 

Hundreds of flights to and from the northern half of the United Kingdom have been cancelled and were widespread at airports, including Edinburgh (90), Glasgow (66), Aberdeen (44) and Belfast City (50). Also, 230 flights were cancelled at Dublin Airport .  

British Airways cancelled 100 domestic and Irish routes to and from London Heathrow and London City. 

Grounded flights also included Emirates’ Glasgow to Dubai route and Qatar Airways flight from Edinburgh to Doha, with many of the flights carrying hundreds of passengers to the Gulf, which were expected to make connections to Asia, Africa and Australia, according to The Independent. Ryanair flights from Edinburgh to Tenerife, Gran Canaria, Malaga and Venice were grounded too. 

In what was regarded as the “largest real life use of the tool”, 4.5 million people across the UK received emergency alerts on their phones warning them of the upcoming storm. 

Analysis of satellite imagery of the storm by weather experts can reveal that a ‘sting jet’ headed across western and northwestern Republic of Ireland today, with a gust of 114mph at Mace Head, recorded at 5am and a sustained wind of 81mph. This breaks the previous record of 113mph, that was set in January of 1945 in Foynes, County Limerick. 

A ‘sting jet’ storm, according to the Met Office, is a small area of very intense winds (often 100mph or more) that can sometimes form in powerful weather systems crossing the UK. Relative to the size of the storm, sting jets are quite narrow, measuring 30 miles across, and can last for 3 to 4 hours. 

However, with guts of winds exceeding 100mph, there is a risk for damage, with the Met Office noting the Great Storm of 1987 as an example of this. 

The Met Office took the unprecedented step of issuing a red warning, which indicates that extreme weather can pose a danger to life. Further amber and yellow warnings for wind and rain were issued for the 25th of January and 26th January. 

The process inside the Met Office to issue a red warning, according to The Independent, involves the use of an ‘impact matrix’, which assesses how high the impact from the weather event will be against how likely that it will occur. If both are forecast to be high, then a red warning is issued.  

To put this in perspective, between 2011 and 2024, a red warning was issued on 19 days, an amber warning on 521 days and yellow warning on 1,922 days.