GALWAY (Dispatches) -- Hundreds of thousands were without power on Wednesday after a new winter storm swept across France, Britain and Ireland, media reports said.
Storm Eleanor cut power to 200,000 households in northern France and was set to move to other regions throughout the day, electricity grid company Enedis said on Wednesday.  
Households in the Normandy region were the worst hit, Enedis, a unit of state-controlled EDF said, while the area around Paris and north-eastern Picardie and Champagne-Ardenne were also among those affected.
The latest weather warning and strong winds come after winter storm Carmen battered western France on Jan 1, with some 40,000 households in the Brittany region temporarily losing power on Monday.
Ireland has also been battered by the storm.
Some 3,000 homes across Northern Ireland were without power, although electricity has been restored to 20,000 properties, the BBC reported.
Over in Ireland's west coast, the storm caused homes and businesses to suffer flood damage and 27,000 were still without electricity on Wednesday after the storm brought heavy rain and winds of up to 155km per hour.
The storm hit Ireland’s fourth largest city, Galway, particularly hard as high tides late on Tuesday forced road closures and wreaked havoc for shop owners.
Ireland’s Electricity Supply Board (ESB) said at one stage on Tuesday 150,000 homes and business were without electricity.
"We're really hopeful, given that it's the last week of a lot of people's Christmas holidays, that we will have power back to pretty much everybody by tonight," Derek Hynes, Operations Manager for ESB, told national broadcaster RTE.
The weather service's second highest level of alert remained in place for the west and northwest of the country. Met Eireann said a combination of high tides and exceptionally high seas would result in coastal damage and further flooding.
In Britain, 2,700 homes were without power in England while only 460 were affected in Wales, the BBC reported.
It cited the British Met Office as saying that gusts reaching 161kmh had been recorded. A yellow warning for wind was in place in Wales, England, most of Northern Ireland and parts of southern Scotland.