A man in his forties has died in Letterkenny, County Donegal, in what local police have described as a 'weather-related incident' associated with Atlantic Storm Amy, which has battered Ireland, the United Kingdom, and parts of Western Europe on Thursday 2 to Saturday 4 October 2025. Around 185 000 homes, businesses, and farms in the Republic of Ireland lost their electricity supplies due to the storm, with a further 50 000 losing power in Northern Ireland, 62 000 in Scotland, 1000 in northern England, and about 300 in Wales. Rail services have been disrupted in Ireland and Scotland, and all of London's Royal Parks have been closed to protect the public from storm-related hazards.
Ocean storms form due to heating of air over the sea in tropical zones. As the air is heated the the air pressure drops and the air rises, causing new air to rush in from outside the forming storm zone. If this zone is sufficiently large, then it will be influenced by the Coriolis Effect, which loosely speaking means the winds closer to the equator will be faster than those further away, causing the storm to rotate, clockwise in the northern hemisphere and anticlockwise in the southern hemisphere.
Whilst the high winds associated these storms is extremely dangerous, the real danger from such storms is often the flooding. Each millibar drop in air pressure can lead to a 1 cm rise in sea level, and large storms can be accompanied by storm surges several meters high. This tends to be accompanied by high levels of rainfall, caused by water picked up by the storm while still at sea, which can lead to flooding, swollen rivers and landslides; which occur when waterlogged soils on hill slopes lose their cohesion and slump downwards, over whatever happens to be in their path.
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