Millions of people in Ireland and northern parts of the U.K. are being urged to stay at home as hurricane-force winds disabled power networks.

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster programme, Aoife Kealy from Met Éireann says the "eye of the storm, at the moment, is centred just north of Ireland, and it is going to move off towards Scotland now in the next few hours".

Ireland has been hit with record wind gusts of 114 miles (183 kilometers) an hour as a winter storm batters the country and northern parts of the U.K. Schools have been closed, trains halted and hundreds of flights canceled in the Republic of Ireland,