LONDON (AP) — Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland are braced for one of the most intense storms in decades, with forecasters warning of extremely rare hurricane-force winds and a danger to life.
The national forecasters for Ireland and the U.K. both issued the most serious weather warnings Thursday about the impact of Storm Éowyn, which is expected to hit the Irish coast in the early hours of Friday before heading northeast to Scotland.
With the storm bringing gusts of wind around 100 mph (161 kph), people have been urged by authorities to put on hold any travel plans, while schools across the areas affected have decided to close for the day.
Ireland’s Met Éireann issued a rare nationwide red warning for wind across the country between 2 a.m. and 10 p.m. It said there’s a possible “danger to life” as well as “extremely dangerous traveling conditions” and the prospect of coastal flooding.
“We haven’t seen forecasted wind speeds like this in quite a long time," said Eoin Sherlock of Met Éireann. “I suppose our inhabitants on the islands have to take great care, because we would expect hurricane-force winds.”
The country's National Emergency Co-ordination Group said the storm will be one of the “most severe” Ireland has experienced.
The U.K.’s Met Office has also issued a red warning for wind for Northern Ireland as well as central and southwestern areas of Scotland on Friday.
In response, the government said around 4.5 million people in the path of the storm will receive an emergency alert on their cellphones Thursday at 6 p.m. to make them aware of the warning. It represents the largest real-life use of the emergency system to date and will cause phones to make a loud siren-like sound, even if they are on silent when the alert is issued.
“We reserve the issuing of Red Warnings for the most severe weather which represents a likely danger to life and severe disruption, and that is the case with Storm Éowyn," the agency's chief meteorologist Paul Gundersen said.
Gundersen said winds could gust 80-90 m.p.h. quite widely for a time, and potentially up to 100 m.p.h. for exposed coasts in particular. The record for a gust in Northern Ireland is 124 m.p.h. in County Down in January 1974.
This is the first red warning issued for Northern Ireland since the Met Office moved to impact-based warnings in 2011. All schools in Northern Ireland have been advised to close on Friday.
“It’s important to emphasize that a red warning is very serious. It's only whenever there is a genuine threat to life and potential damage to property, and the public should expect significant disruption to travel and also potential power outages because of the severity of conditions," Northern Ireland's First Minister Michelle O'Neill said.
The Met Office warning applies on Friday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Northern Ireland and for parts of southern Scotland between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.
Scotland's First Minister John Swinney said police would issue a formal “do not travel” notice later for the area covered by the red weather warning.
“We have to be clear. People should not travel," he said.
Schools in a number of Scottish local authorities will be closed on Friday, including all schools in Glasgow. The Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh will also close.
The other nations of the U.K. — England and Wales — will also face disruption, with all parts of the country covered by one warning at some point on Friday.
“It’s important to note that even those away from the immediate Red Warning areas will still likely see disruptive weather, with travel plans likely to be severely impacted, as well as the possibility of power cuts for some," said the Met Office's Gundersen.
Part of the storm's energy originated with the system that brought historic snowfall along the Gulf Coast of the U.S., said Jason Nicholls, lead international forecaster at the private weather company AccuWeather.
The storm is being propelled by the jet stream and is being fed by energy in upper levels of the atmosphere. A rapid drop in air pressure is expected and could make Éowyn a bomb cyclone, which happens when a storm’s pressure drops 24 millibars in 24 hours.
Scientists say pinpointing the exact influence of climate change on a storm is challenging, but all storms are happening in an atmosphere that is warming abnormally fast due to human-released pollutants like carbon dioxide and methane.
“It’s hard to say if climate change had much impact on the storm," said Nicholls. “It was just a matter of a whole bunch of ingredients coming together to help it rapidly strengthen.”
Suzanne Gray, professor of meteorology at the University of Reading, said “the observed trends in U.K. storminess have not provided a conclusive link with climate change," but that studies have shown that "winter storms may become more frequent and clustered in the future, such that several storms occur one after the other.”
Isabella O'Malley contributed from Philadelphia, PA.
A person wheels a bike on the Great South Wall on a sunny winter's day in Dublin, Ireland, Thursday, Jan. 16, 2025. (Brian Lawless/PA via AP)
NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. stock market is flirting with its all-time high on Friday.
The S&P 500 rose 0.5% and is on track to squeak past its record closing level, which was set in late October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 238 points, or 0.5%, as of 10:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.6% higher.
If the S&P 500 finishes the day at an all-time high, it would be just the latest time the U.S. stock market has powered past what appeared to be a debilitating set of worries. Most recently, those concerns centered on what the Federal Reserve will do with interest rates, whether too many dollars are flowing into artificial-intelligence technology and if sharp drops for cryptocurrencies would bleed over into other markets.
Ulta Beauty helped lead the way on Friday and jumped 11% after the retailer reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected. CEO Kecia Steelman said its customers are broadly feeling pressure, but Ulta saw growth across its categories, particularly in e-commerce. It raised its forecast for revenue over the full year.
Another encouraging signal for the holiday shopping season came from Victoria’s Secret & Co. It reported a milder loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and it likewise raised its forecast for sales over the full year. Its stock jumped 20.4%.
Warner Bros. Discovery was also strong and rose 3.2%. Netflix said it would buy Warner Bros. for $72 billion in cash and stock following the pending split for the company behind HBO Max, “Casablanca” and “Harry Potter” from Discovery Global.
The deal between the two giants could raise fears about too much industry power residing in one company, though, meaning it may not be a sure thing. After initially falling more than 5%, Netflix's stock pared its drop to a dip of 0.2%.
Paramount Skydance, which earlier had been seen as a front-runner to buy Warner Bros., fell 6.3%.
Also on the losing end of Wall Street was Hewlett Packard Enterprise. It slipped 0.6% after reporting weaker revenue for the latest quarter than analysts forecast, though its profit topped expectations.
The U.S. stock market broadly has been much quieter this week. It’s a respite following earlier weeks of sharp and scary swings.
After some back and forth, the widespread expectation among traders is that the Fed will cut its main interest rate next week in hopes of shoring up the slowing U.S. job market. If it does, that would be the third cut of the year, and such expectations have been a major reason the S&P 500 has climbed back toward its record.
Investors love lower interest rates because they boost prices for investments and can juice the economy. The downside is that they can worsen inflation, which is stubbornly remaining above the Fed’s 2% target.
A set of economic reports released on Friday did little to change expectations for a coming cut. One report said that an underlying measure of inflation that the Fed prefers to use was at 2.8% in September, exactly as economists expected.
A separate report said U.S. consumers appear to be bracing for less-bad inflation in the coming year. They're now forecasting 4.1% inflation for the year ahead, down from their forecast of 4.5% last month, and the lowest reading since January, according to the University of Michigan. That's important because when expectations for inflation are doing the opposite and rising, it can create a vicious cycle that only worsens inflation.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury remained at 4.11%, where it was late Thursday.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
Germany’s DAX returned 0.9%, and South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.8% for two of the world’s bigger gains.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.1% after data showed household spending in Japan fell 3.0% in October from a year earlier. It was the sharpest drop since January 2024. Japanese markets have been shaky recently after the Bank of Japan hinted that hikes to interest rates may be coming.
AP Writer Teresa Cerojano contributed.
Options trader Joseph D'Arrigo works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)
Currency traders work near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top right, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders watch monitors near a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top right, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Currency traders pass by a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI), top center left, and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won, top center, at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters, in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
