Bermuda can expect gale force weather today — but a repeat performance of Monday's severe storm is not expected.

Forecasters said last night that southwesterly winds would increase from late afternoon onwards from strong to gale force and would get worse as the evening progressed, with gusts reaching storm force overnight.

But Bermuda Weather Service forecaster Nicole Hannon told The Royal Gazette: "It's not going to be like the last one. This is going to be more of a typical winter-type gale because the low is going to be well off to the North.

"It will not be as severe. It was severe on Monday because the low passed directly over the Island and deepened significantly as it did so."

Hurricane force winds, thunder, lightning and hail hit Bermuda on Monday, with gusts peaking at 92 knots and causing the Causeway to be closed for several hours.

The storm left about 9,000 homes without power overnight. Yesterday, about 13,000 customers in the East End, including several schools, suffered a power cut unrelated to the weather.

A fault with one of the cables which delivers the power supply to the Island was to blame and most customers had power restored by noon.

Belco spokeswoman Susan McGrath-Smith said it was a "bad coincidence" that the two problems happened in such quick succession.

"What actually caused it [yesterday's power cut] is going to take some engineering investigation to see what might have broken down on the cable," she said.

She added: "Weather forecasters predict another storm for Thursday; Belco is preparing and advises customers to take normal winter storm precautions."

Yesterday's cable fault happened just after 7.30 a.m. and affected businesses based at Southside, as well as Grotto Bay Hotel, Esso, Shell and Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences.

Ms McGrath-Smith said yesterday: "Crews have returned to giving full attention to restoration of power to those customers who have been without power as a result of Monday night's hurricane force storm.

"These are all small outages, mostly one customer at a time, scattered across the Island.

"Early this morning, this represented approximately 50 customers.

"Due to the transmission cable fault, this number would not have started to change until crews were able to resume storm restoration work this afternoon."

She said a distribution cable at Mullet Bay was restored at 1.41 pm yesterday, in an incident unrelated to the weather or the larger cable fault.

The Ministry of Education announced at 10 a.m. that the following schools were closed due to lack of electricity: Lyceum, St. George's and St. David's preschools; Francis Patton, St. David's and East End primary schools and St. George's Prep.

Francis Patton and St. David's Preschool were able to reopen after about an hour once power was restored and a Ministry spokesman said all schools were expected to be open as normal today.

Some bus routes, including the 1, 3, 10 and 11, were disrupted yesterday due to ongoing industrial action, staff sickness and storm damage.

Bermuda Weather Service forecaster Ken Smith said last night that gale force winds would probably reach the Island by this evening and would be followed by a substantial amount of rain on Friday. The airport said there were no flight cancellations so far.

Police and Bermuda Maritime Operations Centre reported no weather-related incidents yesterday.