The force of the recent Storm Éowyn has shaken Brighton. The high pressure and rapidly intensifying winds through the Jet Stream contributed to a battering of our coastlines across the nation, and Brighton was no exception.
The MET Office issued yellow warnings in Brighton on account of heavy rain and strong wind, which tells residents to ‘Be Aware’, but poses little risk of loss of life.
Gusts reached upwards of 60 mph, which disrupted travel, and caused widespread damage to property and public roads, knocking over countless bins in the area.
This comes following a cold snap that plunged parts of the UK into temperatures of -10 degrees Celsius. In fact, a figure of -18.9 °C was recorded in Altnaharra, Scotland, on the 11th of January 2025, marking the coldest night recorded in the UK for 15 years. In Brighton, flurries of snow and heavy rain caused widespread disruption for commuters and dangerous conditions for the homeless who were exposed to all of the elements.
As a Southerly coastal town, Brighton experiences its fair share of windy conditions, and luckily Storm Éowyn seems to have spared our city from the fullest extent of its destruction. However, can the same be said across the nation?
The areas most affected were the North of England, the Central Belt, and the Western areas of Scotland and Northern Ireland. Here, the MET office issued red warnings for multiple areas. This is the highest level of alert that can be issued for a natural storm, posing a “risk to life”.
The current death toll stands at two people, both resulting from falling trees. One of these was in Scotland, and the other in Northern Ireland. According to The Guardian, gusts of 113 mph were recorded, leaving 725,000 homes without power in Ireland alone.
Sarah, a student studying Filmmaking at the University of Sussex, was visiting Ireland at the time of the storm. She recounted being “Kept up all night by the very strong current!! A lot of the area around had their power cut off, and a few trees had fallen down”. Iris, a postgraduate of the University, tells of her friend’s experience, who mentioned he was told “Not to leave the house, and all the shops being closed for days”. This unprecedented impact of Storm Éowyn is rarely seen in the UK. However, it seems that globally, 2025 has already started feeling the effects of the ever-changing climate, even only a month in.
In 2025, the annual global temperature of planet Earth passed the 1.5-degree limit for the first time since records began. According to climate scientist Zeke Hausfather, this is alarming because “every tenth of a degree matters and climate impacts get progressively worse the more warming we have.”
Indeed, 2024 was bound to get warmer, with that natural El Niño weather pattern, which caused the Pacific Jet stream to move south, causing more tropical regions in Asia and Africa to experience significantly drier conditions. However, paired with the undeniable influence of greenhouse gases, extreme weather events are all the more inevitable.
2025 has already seen some of the globe’s most detrimental natural disasters, namely the recent fires that have consumed many areas of Los Angeles, California. More than 23,000 acres have been burnt, leading to an estimated $164B loss in capital.
This is an extreme comparison to that of Storm Éowyn, particularly concerning Brighton’s impact. However, with the newly appointed President of the United States determined to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords, which is critical in maintaining some form of limitation on fossil fuels, this does not place planet Earth’s trajectory in the right direction. What can the future hold for us if we continue on this path? The hotter the average temperature gets, the stronger these storms and natural disasters will become.
Brighton’s storm effects may seem picturesque, with only a mildly disruptive impact, but if the statistics are correct, and the planet continues to heat up at the rate we are currently experiencing, it will not be the last weather phenomenon of this intensity that we will see.
