More than 1,000 flights were cancelled and a number of main roads closed as millions of people in the UK and Ireland were asked to stay home amid red “danger to life” warnings owing to a rare “weather bomb” brought by Storm Éowyn.

Rail and ferry services were cancelled on Friday as the storm left hundreds of thousands without power and forced the closure of businesses and schools across Northern Ireland and Scotland.

A man died after a tree fell on his car during Storm Éowyn in County Donegal, police said, and fallen trees and debris blocked a number of main roads across Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and Scotland.

A driver was seriously injured after a collision in Mauchline, East Ayrshire, while another motorist was injured when a tree fell on their van in the Balmore Road area of Glasgow, Police Scotland said.

The Scottish government said about 100,000 homes were without power on Friday, with severe disruption to roads, bridges and public transport, which had forced 92% of schools to close.

John Swinney, Scotland’s first minister, urged people to maintain a “high level of vigilance”.

He said it would take days for roads, essential services and rail services to return to normal after the “exceptional weather event”, partly because it was still too dangerous for clean-up crews and engineers to operate in some places.

Swinney and the police also urged lorry drivers to stay off the roads, with reports of 11 heavy goods vehicles overturning in the ferocious winds.

A gust of 100mph was recorded in Drumalbin, South Lanarkshire, on Friday afternoon, the Met Office said.

A wind speed of 114mph was recorded in Ireland, the fastest since records began, Met Éireann said.

There are Amber and yellow alerts for wind across the rest of the UK going into the weekend.

On Friday, more than 1,070 flights scheduled in the UK and Ireland were cancelled. Rail services were delayed or cancelled including almost all journeys in Scotland, before and during the weather bomb, caused by a powerful jet stream pushing low pressure across the Atlantic towards the UK.

More than 1m homes, farms and businesses in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland were without power on Friday afternoon.

ESB Networks in Ireland and Northern Ireland Electricity Networks said they expected significant further outages, with 725,000 customers affected in the Republic and 283,000 in Northern Ireland.

Some homes and businesses may be without power for a week as an unprecedented number of power cuts are experienced.

Otherwise known as explosive cyclogenesis, a weather bomb happens when the central pressure of a storm drops at least 24 millibars in 24 hours, causing rapid intensification as air is sucked into the storm, creating violent winds strong enough to cause serious damage. Climate breakdown is making these dramatic and extreme weather events more likely.

The Isle of Man’s Department of Infrastructure declared a major incident because of the number of fallen trees and their impact on arterial roads and emergency services, the government said on X.

The Police Service of Northern Ireland described the storm as an “exceptional weather event” that was expected to bring the strongest winds seen in the country since 1998.

The assistant chief constable Davy Beck said there had been wind speeds in excess of 70mph. “We’re seeing significant amounts of debris right across the road network,” he told BBC Radio Ulster. “The road network is dangerous and the message remains stay at home, stay safe and stay off the roads please.”

The first minister, Michelle O’Neill, said on Friday morning: “We’re in the eye of the storm now. We are in the period of the red alert. People can see for themselves, the wind has been very much picking up overnight.

She added: “I think the real message we want to get across to your listeners this morning is to please be ultra cautious, to please stay at home if you can and actually we will see how the storm will rage but the scale of the storm, the level of wind that we’ve experienced across the island, which is something that’s never been seen before.”

Dozens of flights from Glasgow and Edinburgh airports were cancelled, while Belfast International warned of significant disruption to flights. Dublin airport announced more than 110 scheduled departures and 110 arrivals had been cancelled on Friday.

A spokesperson from the UK Civil Aviation Authority had warned earlier in the day that Storm Éowyn was likely to bring “considerable disruption”.

They said: “If a flight faces lengthy delays, airlines have a duty of care to look after their passengers, including providing food and drink and accommodation if overnight. We will not hesitate to take action against any airlines not following these guidelines.”

ScotRail, which runs nearly all Scotland’s domestic rail services, said none of its trains would be running until noon on Saturday at the earliest.

It said Storm Éowyn’s extremely high winds had caused “significant damage” to its infrastructure across Scotland, including to overhead power lines. As a result, it was unclear when train services would resume.

“We won’t know the full extent of the damage until after the storm passes and our Network Rail colleagues can get on to the network and carry out a full assessment. This will obviously take quite a bit of time.

“Our colleagues at Network Rail Scotland will be working flat-out through the night to remove fallen trees and other debris from the tracks. There has also been extensive damage to overhead lines, which will need to be repaired before trains can safely return to service.”

CalMac Ferries on Scotland’s west coast and Steam Packet Ferries between Heysham and the Isle of Man cancelled all sailings on Friday.

Met Éireann reported the mean wind speed record of 81mph set in 1945 at Foynes, County Limerick, had been broken during the storm. The Irish weather service also said there had been gusts of up to 108mph in Mace Head, off Ireland’s west coast, by 4am on Friday.

About 4.5 million people received emergency alerts on their phones on Thursday to warn of the storm in the “largest real-life use of the tool to date”.