Met Office

Thousands of people in northern Scotland are facing a night without power in The Aftermath of Storm Otto.

Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks (SSEN) said its engineers reconnected More Than 35,000 customers on Friday but at 21:00 about 7,600 were still without supply.

Efforts to restore The Network will resume at First Light on Saturday.

Mobile food vans have been deployed to the main affected areas, and will serve hot food and drinks from 08:00.

Storm Otto, The First named storm of the season, was marked by high winds which brought down trees and damaged A Number of vehicles and buildings.

Wind speeds in excess of 80mph were recorded in A Number of places while at Cairngorm Mountain the gusts reached 120mph.

Trains, buses and ferry services were delayed or cancelled, with trees blocking many routes in Aberdeenshire.

Mark Rough, operations director at SSEN Distribution, said there was widespread damage to the electricity network.

" Despite the Extreme Weather conditions throughout This Morning and ongoing challenges gaining access to faults, our teams have made excellent progress restoring power to those homes impacted by Storm Otto and we would like to thank all customers impacted for their ongoing patience and understanding, " He Said .

" We would also like to thank the support we have had from other network operators and contractors from across the country, with additional resources ready to support tomorrow's restoration works from First Light . "

A new Met Office yellow warning for snow and ice was in force for some parts of Scotland, mainly on higher routes in the north, until 09:00 on Saturday.

Kenny McKenzie, told Bbc Scotland that a tree was blown down outside his house in Mintlaw, Aberdeenshire and he lost power at 07:45.

" With no word, no internet, no Mobile Phone , everything stopped working, " He Said .

" One of our neighbours has a gas cooker so she came round with a flask so that we could have our coffee, which was great first thing in The Morning .

" Hopefully we're Going Down to Fraserburgh because The Power 's on there so we'll wait and see if there's a bus, seemingly the buses have stopped as well though nobody seems to know. "

Any customer who has been off supply for longer than 12 Hours is entitled to claim up to £30 for food, per day. Customers are advised to keep receipts.

More Than 100 schools in Aberdeenshire were closed on Friday, with almost 50 in Highland and a handful in Moray also affected.

Angus Council said the Burnside Primary School building was not safe for children and staff, after The Roof was seriously damaged.

Children from P1-7 will be provided with remote learning from 22 February when The School returns from the mid-term break.

North East Scotland College in Aberdeen also closed following damage to The Roof of its city campus.

Bbc Scotland Weather said gusts of 83mph had been recorded in Inverbervie, Aberdeenshire, and 80mph in Lossiemouth, Moray, and at Tain in the Highlands.

The Storm was named Otto by the Danish Met Office . The UK Met Office has adopted the Same Name .

It is The First named storm to hit the UK since Franklin last February.

The Met Office 's season for named storms runs from September to September, and The Names are given to raise awareness of severe weather.

Source of news: bbc.com