4,000 houses without power (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

4,000 houses without power

Lightning strikes knocked out power to more than 4,000 homes across the Swindon area.

Southern Electricity was making final repairs to several transformers following the powerful storms, which battered Swindon and much of Wiltshire yesterday.

The company said it hoped to re-connect the supply to most homes in the town by late last night.

Denis Kerby, a spokesman for Southern Electricity, said: "Some extremely powerful storms and lightning strikes have affected overhead lines in the Swindon and Melksham area. We have recorded 30 strikes.

"Some of our engineers were hindered by the storms which continued for longer than we expected.

"Safety for our staff is paramount and sending them up on to overhead line in the middle of an electrical storm would not have been a good idea.

"In most cases it's simply a case switching a safety trip switch to turn the power back.

"However several transformers have been damaged which may take longer to repair."

It is understood the blackouts affected Wootton Bassett, Cricklade, Broad Hinton, Wanborough and Broad Town.

There were also delays on the M4 yesterday morning, from Membury Services to Junction 18 at Bath, because of torrential rain and drivers were asked to exercise extreme caution and reduce their speed.

Firefighters in Cricklade were called out to the bottom of the town's High Street where there was some minor flooding.

Compared to the summer storms last year Swindon got off lightly, with no reports of any flooding from Swindon Council.

But there was flooding in Chippenham and Sutton Benger and several roads in Bradford-on-Avon were under water.

Met Office instruments at the weather centre at RAF Lyneham recorded 10.8 millimetres of rain roughly half an inch falling in a single hour at 9am on yesterday morning. Today's weather is expected to be quite cloudy but with some sunny spells, while tomorrow and Monday should see a return to the fine weather.

On Tuesday rain is expected to make a come back.

Anthony Osborne