Four dead after storm packing 100mph winds batters South

One of the victims was a gifted 17-year-old grammar schoolgirl who was killed when a huge tree toppled on to her mobile home as she slept.

Bethany Freeman was crushed as the 30ft tree fell down amid high winds in Hever, near Edenbridge, Kent. Neighbours rushed to the scene with chainsaws in a desperate attempt to free the teenager but she was declared dead.

Bethany and her family were living in mobile homes while renovation work was taking place at their home, according to local people.

Elsewhere, the bodies of two people were found at an address in Hounslow, west London, after a falling tree led to a suspected gas explosion.

Donal Drohan, a 51-year-old father-of-three, died when his car was crushed by a tree as he drove through Watford.

Although Yorkshire escaped the brunt of the bad weather, train services to and from London were decimated with the two main operators – East Coast and East Midlands – advising passengers not to travel to the capital by rail, causing chaos for tens of thousands of travellers.

High winds brought down overhead power lines and blew debris onto the track, leaving East Coast unable to run services further south than Peterborough and East Midlands none beyond Bedford.

Some limited services began running again later in the day and both operators planned to run a near-normal service today if Network Rail’s repair work went to schedule overnight.

Later in the day, the Met Office lifted its amber warning as the heart of the storm blew away from Norfolk and over the North Sea, leaving a trail of destruction and disruption behind it.

Winds of up to 100mph had swept through the South West, South, South East, the Midlands and the east of England after first hitting land in the early hours.

The storm, dubbed St Jude after the patron of lost causes, caused traffic problems on road, rail, air and sea.

The Energy Networks Association said 459,000 homes which suffered power cuts across England had supplies restored, but 166,000 were still disconnected.

The port of Dover in Kent had to be shut, train and Tube services were disrupted, more than 130 flights at Heathrow Airport were cancelled and many roads were impassable due to fallen trees.

Debris falling onto power lines caused a nuclear power station in Kent to automatically close down both its reactors.

The Environment Agency said there were four flood warnings and 99 flood alerts still in place.

The storm, which hit in the early hours of yesterday morning, had peak wind gusts of 99mph in the Isle of Wight and drenched Cardiff with more than two inches of rainfall over 24 hours.

The Met Office said it was not since the early hours of October 27, 2002 – almost 11 years to the day – that the UK had endured a storm of similar ferocity. That storm hit wind peaks of 102mph.

A spokeswoman said the biggest advantage of the latest storm was that it hit during the early hours of the morning, before commuters took to the streets on their way to work.