Belco crews managed to restore power to the vast majority of households deprived of electricity during Thursday?s high winds although their efforts were somewhat hampered by gale force gusts.

By last night, only eight houses across the Island remained in the dark, and even those homes had partial power.

It was a huge forward leap from the 1,800 households that had been knocked out on Thursday afternoon when the winter storm reached its peak.

?The weather has hampered our progress,? said Belco spokeswoman Linda Smith. ?But our intent is to get everyone back up.?

She said yesterday?s high winds meant it was more dangerous for technicians to work, and also that power outages kept occurring mainly because branches were still hitting lines.

For this reason, the number of blacked out homes kept going down but then rising again.

?When storms come through it slows our restoration rate. Sometimes crews just have to stop work.?

When the worst of the storm hit on Thursday, a pole was blown down on Cockburn Road, Sandys but crews had it repaired by eight hours later.

The weather failed to have any impact on flights in and out of Bermuda International Airport yesterday. However, there were two extra flights laid on by Delta and Continental to make up for the flights to and from Atlanta and Philadelphia respectively that were cancelled on Thursday.

?It?s been a very busy day down here and very windy and blustery but we?ve been able to cope with conditions,? said Airport General Manager James Howes.

The inclement conditions do not look set to let up. Strong to gale force winds were forecast to dog the Island over the weekend.