Footage captured the dramatic moment that a mom rescued her baby daughter as 100-mile-per-hour winds shattered their bedroom window during the bomb cyclone Ciaran pummeling Western Europe.
“It felt like something was going to go wrong, and then the glass all came in,” Jessica O’Reilly told ITV News of the heart-pounding moment, which occurred at their home on the island of Jersey.
In the dramatic footage shot on a baby camera, O’Reilly and her three-month-old daughter Penelope can sleep soundly as powerful winds lash their shutters, shocking the mom awake.
Suddenly, a gust shatters the window, sending glass flying across the room like something out of the “Wizard Of Oz.”
Thinking quickly, O’Reilly grabs her progeny and flees the room as shards blanket the bed.
“I just grabbed her [three-month-old Penelope] and ran downstairs,” the distraught parent recalled. “There was a lot of glass that came in, and I’m just lucky that I grabbed her when I did because there was a load of glass in her bed, on the bed, all over on the floor, all over.”
O’Reilly said she and her child are “lucky to be alive” as she felt as if the “whole house was going to collapse in.”
ITV journalist Sophie Dulson reported on X that both mother and child are “safe and have been moved into a hotel in ST. Helier.”
The dramatic footage emerged as Ciaran battered the Western Europe, generating up to 108 mile per hour winds, and leaving 1.2 million French households without electricity Thursday, the AP reported.
Strong winds also pummeled the UK’s Channel Islands, prompting airports to flights out of Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney.
“It looks like a once-in-every-few-years storm for the U.K. and France,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and science writer with Yale Climate Connections.
And the storm didn’t just affect the other side of the pond. Ciaran generated wind speeds of over 200 miles per hour in the upper atmosphere across Maine Tuesday — a phenomenon that pilots were quick to take advantage of.
Air France Flight 79, heading from Los Angeles to Paris Tuesday morning, reportedly received a 200-mph boost in ground speed by flying into the eye of the jet stream.
The plane was reportedly clocked at 768 mph relative to the ground — over 200 mph faster than its normal speed.