BERMUDA got off lightly in its brush with Hurricane Nate yesterday, as the storm drifted by well to our south.

At its closest point, between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. yesterday, the eye of the slow-moving system passed within 107 nautical miles of the island.

That was well outside the range of the hurricane-force winds that extended around 25 miles from the system's centre.

Bermuda Weather Service duty forecaster Khamla Smith said the maximum gusts recorded yesterday were 42 knots, and winds of 25 to 35 knots were still sweeping across the island well into the afternoon.

"We also recorded three-quarters of an inch of rain, most of it from one very heavy shower at about 8.30 a.m.," Ms Smith said.

Nate, a category one hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, was moving away at a forward speed of eight knots to the north-east yesterday afternoon. The strong winds yesterday morning resulted in outages for around 440 Belco customers, but the electricity company restored power to virtually all of them within an hour and a half.

In a statement released yesterday afternoon, Belco said three circuits had been affected, resulting in power cuts. Some 200 customers in the Berkeley Road / Admiralty area lost power at 1.43 a.m. and it was restored at 2.50 a.m.

At Stokes Point, St. David's, 192 customers were without power from 10.46 a.m. to 11.55 a.m. And in Devon Springs, a further outage affected 20 customers between 9.46 a.m. and 11.08 a.m.

In addition there were a few isolated calls during the morning which were all restored by around 1 p.m., including one at Spring Hill, Warwick, where a transformer needed to be replaced.

Tree damage to overhead lines also caused power cuts for around 30 customers in Wellman Lane and Whaling Hill, Southampton and Ord Road, Warwick.

A Bermuda Police Service spokesman said yesterday afternoon that officers did not have to deal with a single storm-related incident.

Government offices and schools were open and public transportation services were operating as normal, apart from the ferry service to St. George's, which was suspended due to the choppy conditions.