Heavy rains soaked the island yesterday and caused flooding in some low-lying areas.

The weather also temporarily knocked out power to about 1,000 Belco customers in Warwick after lightning struck two poles shortly after 8am.

A spokeswoman said crews carried out repairs on both poles and power was restored within three hours. Meanwhile, the Bermuda Broadcasting Company suffered outages affecting all of its stations, stating that the Fort Hill area of Prospect “was saturated with electricity from powerful lightning strikes”.

The broadcaster said staff had been working to restore service, bringing Power 95, Inspire 105 and Ocean 89 back online. But as of yesterday afternoon work was still being done to restore its television channels.

“A damage assessment is under way and replacement parts may need to be flown in from overseas before the TV channels can be fully functional,” the statement said.

“The company wishes to thank its listeners and advertisers for their patience while it works to restore remaining services to the country.

“The BBC would also like to take this opportunity to thank local utility companies for helping to restore essential services such as power and communications to Prospect.”

Meteorologist Rob Howlett, of the Bermuda Weather Service, said a cold front passing over the island had produced 0.92 inches of rainfall at LF Wade International Airport by noon, although he added that other areas of the island could have seen more rain.

“The front became much more active as it moved across the island around daybreak due to increased instability from cold air aloft,” he said.

“March has been a wetter-than-average month with 7.68in as of this writing [normally 4.44in during the month] and we are 5.67in above average for the year.”

Several stretches of road were left under inches of water in the morning as the public endured their morning commute, leading to some traffic delays. However, the weather cleared over the course of the day.

While flooding has been a long-standing concern in the Mill Creek area, Ed Faries of Tops Ltd said he was pleasantly surprised to see the road had not flooded when he arrived for work.

“Of course, if this rain continues until high tide, we will probably be underwater as all of the rain that fell in the city rushes this way,” he said.

Mr Faries noted that government workers had cleaned out a large portion of trash that had been blocking the system and making flooding worse.

“Half of the problem was there was so much trash,” he said. “Since they cleaned that out, it has been much better.” Cindy Anne Adams, who was at Pompano Beach yesterday morning, said she was surprised to catch video of a waterspout off the coast.

“My husband was on the bed and happened to see something coming across the water,” she said.

“I went out on the balcony in all the wind and the rain and captured that moment. I just thought, ‘Wow, what is this thing?’.

“I had never seen anything like it before.”

James Dodgson, the acting director of the BWS, explained that waterspouts formed from unstable air masses in a cumuliform cloud, causing a rotation at the base of the cloud.

“As this rotation increases and becomes more organised, a funnel cloud develops,” he said. “It is then only when the funnel cloud reaches down to the surface of the ocean that it becomes a bona fide waterspout.”