Businesses were left facing a 'tight' Christmas as the Dartmouth's storm hit streets were left virtually deserted with just two shopping days to go to Christmas.

For a while on Monday, the town was virtually cut off by river and road as all the ferries were forced to stop running and the main road in Dartmouth was hit by severe surface water flooding.

The weather station at the Froward Point National Coastwatch station reported gusts of up to 80mph as the town was battered by gales and heavy rain.

The harbour authority said winds had hit storm force 11 – with storm force 12 designated as hurricane force.

And there could be more of the same today weathermen have predicted.

Trees came down on the outskirts of Dartmouth and in Kingswear, partially blocking roads, and hedge bank landslides also caused problems on the roads.

Dartmouth Business Forum chairman Paul Reach said: 'The streets were very, very quiet in Dartmouth.

'It looks like one of the quietest Christmases that we can remember.

'Hopefully it is just down to the weather conditions, so that people were not able to travel and the usual influx of holidaymakers coming down here for Christmas have just not made it.'

Both the Higher and Lower ferries were halted on Monday because of the high winds driving straight up the Dart.

The Lower Ferry was halted between 9.30pm and 3pm while the Higher Ferry shut down operations at 10am and also restarted at 3pm – although it closed down again at 10pm.

For the full story see this week's Dartmouth Chronicle