Engineers will continue to work through the night to restore power to the remaining 7,500 properties cutting off.

They include homes and businesses in Wigton, Silloth, Bridgefoot and Penrith.

Electricity North West workers have already restored power to 15,200 properties since Storm Ali brought severe gales to the North West today.

The region’s power network operator has repaired damage to overhead power lines, mainly in Cumbria and north Lancashire.

Chris Fox, network systems manager for Electricity North West, said: "I’m extremely proud of the work carried out so far today by our engineers to repair the damage and restore power to customers after the severe weather.

"We have extra engineers working and ready to cover late shifts too. They have worked in difficult conditions to repair the damage and we know that our job isn’t finished until the last customer is back on.

"Unfortunately we’re not out of the bad weather yet and as we restore power more faults are coming in but we are getting people back on as soon as we can.

"At this stage it’s likely that we’ll have some customers off overnight in the north Lakes, due to the scale of the incident and the damage done to the network in those areas."

Further updates, where possible, will be given through local radio, social media and the organisation's website, he added.

People can visit www.enwl.co.uk/powercuts for more information, or follow Electricity North West on Facebook or Twitter.

Customers can also call Electricity North West on 105 to report power cuts.

Earlier today, more than 6,600 properties were left without power in Cumbria thanks to Storm Ali.

These included:

  • 777 in the Distington area
  • 673 in the CA13 and Aspatria
  • 503 in Greystoke
  • 49 CA6 north of Brampton
  • 12 om the Wigton area
  • 32 in the CA17 postcode (Eden)
  • 294 CA17 postcode (Eden)
  • 33 CA16 (Eden)
  • 44 CA10
  • 123 CA4 (south west of Carlisle)
  • 222 CA4 (south west of Carlisle)
  • 10 in the Workington area
  • 10 in the Cockermouth area
  • 231 CA13/CA5/CA7 around Mealsgate
  • 169 CA4
  • 24 CA4
  • 432 CA5
  • 495 CA7 north of Wigton (Abbeytown/Newton Arlosh)

Electricity North West said its engineers were battling the elements and had restored power to 2,550 properties.

A further 6,650 properties also affected in the north west, across 25 separate faults including Wigton, Distington, Aspatria and Penrith.

Incident manager Sam Loukes said: "High winds can cause flying debris and falling trees to damage overhead lines, causing power cuts.

"We do have a rolling programme of cutting back the closest trees to lines, but unfortunately it’s not possible to prevent all power cuts.

"We have teams of engineers working to fix a number of power cuts that have occurred so far today.

"We’ll work to get people back on as soon as possible as long as it’s safe for our teams to climb our poles to rebuild lines where necessary.”