Ireland was hit with 183km/h winds, the strongest on record, as a winter storm lashed the country and northern parts of the UK on Friday, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power.

Schools were closed, trains ground to a halt and hundreds of flights canceled in the Republic of Ireland, neighboring Northern Ireland and Scotland as the system, dubbed Storn Éowyn by weather authorities, roared on.

Forecasters have issued a rare “red” weather warning, meaning danger to life, for the entire island of Ireland and central and south-west Scotland on Friday.

“Please stay at home if you can,” Northern Ireland First Minister Michelle O’Neill told BBC Radio Ulster. “We are now in the eye of the storm. We are in a red alert period.”

The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh closed its doors and Scottish First Minister John Swinney said: “We have to be clear. People should not be travelling.”

More than 700,000 homes and businesses in Ireland and almost 100,000 in Northern Ireland were without power due to “unprecedented, widespread and extensive” damage to electrical infrastructure, the Irish Electricity Supply Board said.

The Irish Met Office, Met Eireann, said the new wind record set at Mace Head on the west coast eclipsed the previous mark of 182 km/h set in 1945.

The storm is fueled by the jet stream and powered by energy in the upper atmosphere. A rapid drop in air pressure is expected and could make Éowyn a bomb cyclone, which occurs when a storm’s pressure drops 24 milbars in 24 hours.

Scientists say it’s true that the exact impact of climate change on storms is challenging, but all storms occur in an atmosphere that is warming abnormally quickly due to human-released pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane.

“As the climate gets warmer, we can expect these storms to become even more intense, with more damage,” said Hayley Fowler, professor of climate change impacts at Newcastle University.