Hundreds of thousands of people were stranded or without power as gales caused travel chaos and brought down electricity lines. Lorries were blown over, blocking motorways and main roads, while flights and ferries were cancelled or delayed.
Network Rail said nearly 5,000 trains - around half the daily total - had been cancelled or delayed by yesterday evening. The rail company said its engineers were dealing with 1,000 reports of blockages on lines. The disruption will continue today.
Trafficmaster, the traffic monitoring network, described today as its "busiest single day for recorded traffic incidents in 10 years". A spokesman said: "We have seen 600 separate part or full road closures today due to accidents, overturned vehicles or fallen trees. A normal busy day would see 100. At its peak this afternoon at 3pm, we were monitoring 226 simultaneous incidents - the highest ever recorded."
Hundreds of thousands of people lost electricity across the UK. Tens of thousands were left without power overnight.
Flights were cancelled or delayed at airports across the country. Television pictures showed one plane almost being blown sideways as it tried to take off from Birmingham International. Snow in parts of northern England and Scotland also made driving hazardous.
In London, millions of commuters were stranded as almost all services from Liverpool Street, Euston and King's Cross were cancelled and three-quarters of the tube network experienced delays or partial closures. London Bridge station was closed after part of the station forecourt roof collapsed.
A spokesman for Virgin Trains said: "It has been a dreadful day. We are hoping to run a skeleton service first thing on Friday but it is going to be very difficult at the start of the day. Normally we would put on replacement buses but we are finding that a lot of the roads are closed."
Insurers said the damage was likely to run into many millions of pounds. In London part of the roof was blown off the Tavern stand at Lord's cricket ground and scaffolding five storeys high crashed to the ground, narrowly missing passersby.
A spokesman for the Met office said that this week's storms are worse than those last week which killed nine people. However the winds were not as destructive as the 1987 gales which claimed 23 lives.
Calmer, but colder, weather is forecast.
