Hundreds of people lost power as a result of strong winds this weekend.

And a Storm Warning has been issued for tomorrow afternoon and evening.

Ken Smith, meteorologist with the Bermuda Weather Service, added that a Gale Warning would again be in effect for tomorrow night through to Tuesday morning.

Mr Smith said winds would increase to between 51mph and 57mph with gusts to 74mph later tomorrow afternoon and into the evening.

At 6.45pm today, 72 Belco customers remained out of power as heavy waves from Winter Storm Riley lashed the island. That number was down from 1,300 at 11.30am.

A damaged utility pole in Belmont, Warwick, was responsible for more than 800 of the outages, according to a Belco spokeswoman.

Meanwhile residents in Hamilton Parish suffered outages after a pole was damaged on Radnor Road, Hamilton Parish, at about 8am. Workmen were at the scene this morning.

Further damage includes a retaining wall at Coney Island bridge, which was smashed apart, and a chunk of land at Shelly Bay which vanished due to wave action.

According to the Windguru website, Bermuda can expect winds of between 35mph and 38mph today, with stronger gusts. They are forecast to peak at 52mph, with gusts up to 62mph, by tomorrow evening.

The Belco spokeswoman said repairs were under way on the utility poles. She said: “All others are smaller outages, mostly due to trees being in the lines.

“We have all available crews out right now and they will continue restoration efforts throughout the day.

“We anticipate continued outages throughout the day and all available crews are working to restore the various outages across the island.”

Yesterday, ferry routes were suspended until further notice.

The Bermuda Government urged the public to use care and caution when travelling on the roads. The Emergency Measures Organisation is monitoring the weather.