Heavy winds and stormy weather knocked out power to 4,500 homes on Saturday and approximately 2,000 Cablevision customers experienced disruption to television and Internet services.

According to Susan McGrath-Smith, spokeswoman for BELCO, heavy winds knocked out several main line circuits around the Island – causing the power outages.

"At the peak we had about 4,500 homes without power on Saturday morning," said Ms McGrath-Smith.

"We had crews working all through Saturday night until 5 a.m. on Sunday at which point new crews went out."

She added: "Throughout the day we were able to get the total number of homes without power down to 400 and down to only 18 as of Sunday afternoon."

Ms McGrath-Smith placed much of the blame for Saturday's outages on untrimmed trees and bushes interfering with power lines.

Meanwhile Terry Roberson, General Manager of Bermuda Cablevision said: "As a result of the high winds experienced on Saturday, there were several power and electronic outages affecting many homes throughout the Island.

"The outages interrupted CableVision's cable and Internet services in approximately 2,000 homes."

Mr. Roberson added: "When these outages occurred Saturday, our maintenance technicians worked throughout the entire day to place generators at these locations for temporary power or replace equipment to restore services."

According to James Dodgson of the Bermuda Weather Service, Saturday's high winds can be blamed on a winter low pressure system.

"The strongest mean winds recorded at the airport were just under 45 mph with gusts up to 64 mph."

Mr. Dodgson added that in some of the Islands more exposed areas, such as Commissioner's Point recorded gusts of up to 80 mph. While there were no storm related accidents reported, the wind succeeded in toppling trees and battering coastal homes with large waves.