Storm Ali: Hundreds of Meath homes still without power

Hundreds of homes across Meath remain without power today, as ESB crews work to try to restore electricity to homes across across the county in the aftermath of Storm Ali.

While there were widespread outages affecting thousands of customers yesterday, many faults have been dealt with, with power restored to large numbers of homes by yesterday evening.

Today there remain pockets of the county without electricity including areas of Kells, Navan, Duleek, Julianstown, Skyrne, Rathfeigh and Clonmellon as well as Ardee and Kingscourt.

All seven fire services across Meath were out in force for most of the day yesterday as they dealt with report after report of fallen trees, debris and fallen branches.

In some areas, trees were completing blocking roads and in several cases, trees also brought phone and power lines down with them.

Council crews were also out throughout the day clearing  fallen trees and debris in conjunction with the fire service.

A Status Orange alert was in place but many were taken by surprise by the ferocity of the winds and the resulting damage.

The fact that trees are still in full leaf, and the earlier summer drought appear to have contributed to the amount of trees that were brought down by the gusts of up to 130km/ph that battered the county for several hours.

By late afternoon the winds had died down, however, a yellow weather warning remaining in place until 9pm last night.