Storm aftermath: Boelo and Austen leave 150,000 homes without power

Storms Boelo and Austen struck northern Europe within 24 hours of each other, cutting electricity to more than 150,000 homes and killing a man in Scotland. The weather systems disrupted flights and phone networks across the region. Authorities in the UK, France, and Germany provided the outage figures on Sunday.

In the United Kingdom, more than 82,000 homes lost power. A 60-year-old man died in southwestern Scotland after a tree fell on him. Two women were injured by another falling tree in central Scotland. The Met Office warned that Boelo posed a danger to life from flying debris and crashing waves, advising residents to stay indoors. Winds reached 135 km/h (84 mph) in Argyll and Bute.

France experienced the most severe impact of the two systems. Enedis, the national energy company, reported that 288,000 homes were without electricity at Austen's peak on Saturday. By midday Sunday, 59,000 customers remained dark, primarily in Normandy and Brittany. A marathon runner in northern France sustained minor injuries when a tree fell during a race.

Germany saw at least 10,000 homes lose power in and around Freiburg-Breisgau on Sunday. The main hospital in the area limited services to emergency cases due to the blackout. The outage also interrupted mobile phone service. In the town of Nastatten, two people were seriously injured on Saturday when scaffolding was blown away at a market.

The storms also affected the Netherlands and Belgium. Four people were injured by falling trees in Brussels on Saturday. In the Netherlands, three crew members on a freight ship north of Schiermonnikoog were injured. Two were airlifted to a mainland hospital. Hundreds of flights were cancelled or diverted across the region, including at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport.