The big clear up starts today after England and Wales was battered by the worst Atlantic storm in 17 years. The last storm which brought such strong and widespread winds was the Burns' Day Storm, which some of you may remember back in January 1990.

The vigorous area of low pressure pushed into the west of the country during the early hours of Thursday bringing gusts in excess of 80mph by 5am to the Needles, on the western point of the Isle of Wight, and also to Aberdaron on the Lleyn Peninsula in Wales. The winds quickly strengthened across the rest of England and Wales through the morning, with Thursday's highest wind gust of 99mph being recorded, again at the Needles, at 7am.

It wasn’t just coastal areas which suffered, but also many inland areas where widespread severe gales were also experienced. London Heathrow Airport reported gusts of wind up to 77mph at 1pm, which forced the cancellation of over 100 flights. Flights were also cancelled during the morning at Cardiff International Airport.

It wasn't only flights that were affected but also many trains, which ran a reduced service and some ferry operators, were forced to cancel Channel ferry crossings as winds whipped up stormy seas.

There are reports that 10 people were killed in the UK on Thursday due to wind related incidents. There was a narrow escape for 26 crew members on board a vessel which was sinking around 45 miles southeast of Lizard Point in Cornwall. A massive rescue effort was launched as the ship started sinking after suffering damage, with Royal Navy Rescue helicopters airlifting all 26 to safety and French tug boats battling the waves to try and bring the ship under control.

Not much of England and Wales was left unscathed or left without some signature of the wind, with many trees felled, structural damage to buildings and power lines cutting electricity to many thousands of customer’s right across the country.

Even though Scotland managed to escape the worst of the wind, with a calm day across much of the Highlands area, heavy snow fell here. Some parts of the A9 had to be shut after several inches of snow fell. The snow here has come as a bonus to the ski centres with the upper slopes of the Cairngorms in the east reporting 45cm (almost half a metre) of snow, while the Nevis Range in the west has 42cm on its upper slopes.

Snow didn't just fall in the Highlands but also settled in the Central belt of Scotland, with several flights cancelled at Glasgow Airport due to the reduced visibilities. Snow also fell across northern England and caused for a tricky morning commute across Yorkshires M62.

The storm began to move away to the east taking its stormy winds over the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and into Poland.

There has been an oil spill in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, after a container ship was slammed into the dock, and into the main oil storage terminal.

In Germany there are reports of 10 deaths as the winds reached similar figures to here in the UK. However, the winds were slightly stronger over the higher parts of the south where winds reached nearly 130mph late on Thursday at Wendelstein.

Here are some of the highest gusts of the day:

Needles, Isle of Wight - 99mph

Dublin Airport, Eire - 91mph

Great Dun Fell, Cumbria - 91mph

Crosby, Merseyside - 84mph

Killowen, County Down - 82mph

Holbeach, Lincolnshire - 81mph

Lake Vyrnwy, Cambrians, Wales - 81mph

Sheerness, Kent - 78mph

London Heathrow - 77mph

Blackpool - 77mph

Ronaldsway, Isle of Man - 76mph

Valley, Ynys Mon - 71mph

Salisbury - 71mph

It was pretty bad in alot of the country, i lost a bit of TV reception but that was about it!

Yeah, wouldn't have described it as crippling.

well i meant to say cripples northern europe cause there are 47 dead from the storm and billions of dollars in damage

Still not crippling, just unfortuante, high pressure does such things. Still nothing compared to the tail of a hurricaine that hit Europe in 1987.

really? i didnt know about that one... was it far worse than this one?

Much much worse. Especially when the weather reporter told everyone that it was not going to happen.

haha he must work in ohio then....

Oh please... We had a storm like that, if not slightly worse, and we had power outages last for a week and a half in many places. We lost it for two days.. my friend had no power for 7...

;P Hardly crippling, Lel XD

Michael Fish? He warned that it was going to be extremely windy. When he said there was going to be no hurricane, that was in reply to a viewer who made a call asking about a supposed Hurricane in America at the time.

receivingendofsirens, when cutting and pasting a story from another site you must provide a source. In this case the Source is by Sean Batty and it is from BBC World News.

This story is actually from 19^th January.

yea, my bad i usually do... just forgot to put the source.. thanks for the reminder though!