The Island's first serious winter storm of the year brought power outages, rough seas and left a whole parish cut off from the rest of civilisation.

Windy conditions blew across the Island from the early hours yesterday with gusts up to 70 knots causing the Causeway to be closed all day.

The road bridge was initially due to open at 9 a.m. but was delayed as the high winds continued to gust, finally re-opening at 7.30 p.m. leaving east enders with a day off from work.

Aaron Adderley, General Manager at the L.F. Wade International Airport said last night: "The Airport was open today and has been open all day today. Fortunately a good portion of airport workers do live in the east end. Operations have been continuing.

"We had a couple of flights this morning, nothing commercial, a military flight and a private flight. The winds are favourable for flight operations but it causes a cross wind effect at the Causeway. A lot of times the Causeway could be open and the airport closed or the airport open and the Causeway closed."

He said the only flight he knew that would be operating today was Continental but encouraged travellers to check with their carrier for cancellations or delays.

The duty forecaster at the Bermuda Weather Service said the storm was due to die down last night and cancelled the storm warning at 8 p.m.

"The highest mean wind speed, recorded at the airport was 47 knots with a gust to 61 knots around 7.20 a.m. The highest mean wind speed, recorded at the Commissioner's Point AWOS station, was approximately 60 knots around 5.30 a.m. and the highest gust was approximately 80 knots around 6.30 a.m. and again around 11.00 a.m.

"Keep in mind that this AWOS station is located on the roof of the Commissioner's House in Dockyard and represents an extreme of the winds in the highest and most exposed areas around Bermuda."

She also said while there were frequent showers passing over the Island, they were light and did not amount to much accumulation with 0.13 inches of rain.

Asked if next week will see another storm, the forecaster said: "Right now, the models indicate another low pressure centre moving up the US east coast on Monday that will bring a cold front through our area sometime during the day on Tuesday. For now the winds do not look like they will reach gale force, but as this is at the end of our forecast period, there is time for conditions to change."

Meanwhile, up to 2,300 Belco customers were without power but by 7 p.m. yesterday only 700 were without power.

A spokesperson said: "All main lines have been restored. Some branch lines and small scattered outages remain. So, at this hour 700 customers are without power.

"Crews will continue working until midnight. They will then stand down so they can rest and will resume work first thing in the morning to restore any customers who remained off over night. At this hour it is impossible to accurately state what that number will be."

CableVision trucks also took to the streets to fix dangling cable lines and repair outages.

Public transportation was not in operation yesterday even though Government had said buses would be running. The ferry service was suspended all day.

In the midst of the storm, many boats broke free from moorings including party boat the MV Longtail which was partially capsized in Hamilton Harbour.

The boat broke free, crashed into White's Island and was pulled back to Albouy's Point by a rescue boat.