London was
placed under its first-ever “red” weather warning and millions were urged to
stay indoors as Storm Eunice pounded the United Kingdom with record-breaking
winds on Friday.

Flights and
trains were disrupted across the country as winds, reaching speeds up to 122
miles per hour (196.34 kilometeres per hour), uprooted trees and rooftops, knocked
out power to thousands of homes and sent flying debris across much of northern
Europe.

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The gust
was recorded on the Isle of Wight off southern England, which the Met Office
said was “provisionally the highest gust ever recorded in England”.

A “red”
weather warning, which means there is a “danger to life”, was also issued across
southern parts of England and Wales. The red alert was issued from 10am to 3pm,
while a lower amber level warning was issued for the entire country from 5am to
9pm, according to the Associated Press.

Eunice,
which is known as Storm Zeynep in Germany, blew power to nearly 80,000 homes in
Ireland and around 5,000 in Cornwall and Devon in southwest England.

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It is the
second named storm to hit Europe in two days, with the first storm killing at
least five people in Germany and Poland. Peter Inness, a meteorologist at the
University of Reading in England, attributed the storms to an unusually strong
jet stream over the eastern Atlantic Ocean, with winds close to 200 mph at high
altitudes.

“A strong
jet stream like this can act like a production line for storms, generating a
new storm every day or two,” Inness said. “There have been many occasions in
the recent past when two or more damaging storms have passed across the U.K.
and other parts of Europe in the space of a few days.

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Even before
the forecast high winds arrived, Eunice was already wreaking havoc with travel
across southern England and Wales with many train services interrupted and
numerous flights cancelled. A number of tourist attractions in England,
including the London Eye, Legoland and Warwick Castle, closed ahead of the
storm.

A section
of the Millennium Dome in London was shredded by the winds.

“I urge all
Londoners to stay at home, do not take risks, and do not travel unless it is
absolutely essential,″ Mayor Sadiq Khan said.