WINDS of up to 70 miles an hour brought chaos across Hampshire today damaging houses, blowing over trees, cancelling ferries and even closing Southampton Container Terminals.

The gales also brought chaos and disruption to the county's power grid.

At Southampton Container Terminals all lorry bookings were cancelled after high winds forced the container port to shut indefinitely.

Wightlink's ferry services between Lymington and Yarmouth and Red Funnel's services from Southampton were also suspended.

Red Funnel resumed ferry crossings at about 1.35pm although the Red Jet was still out of action.

The south coast radio stations of Power FM, Original 106 and Wave found themselves off air for a while as the winds caused a power cut to a shared transmitter on the Isle of Wight.

Along the county's motorways, gantry signs warned motorists: "Slow down, strong winds."

A fallen tree also blocked one side of the A337 opposite the Balmer Lawn Hotel at Brockenhurst, while other trees were blown on to power lines on the A27 at East Wellow and on to the road in Summer Lane, Beaulieu.

Firefighters were called out to a house in Valentine Close, Fareham after part of a house roof blew off and left the remainder unstable.

Rail services between Bournemouth and Southampton were disrupted after a tree blocked the line at Sway in the New Forest.

At Southampton Airport the weather also caused the cancellation of flights to and from Alderney, and Amsterdam.

A flight to Manchester and another one to Galway were also scrapped due to the winds, which caused delays on every other flight.

Southern Electric also reported that more than 2500 residents in the Romsey area were left without electricity.

Residents in North Baddesley, Braishfield and Ampfield were effected as trees and other debris landed on power cables.

There were also 25 other major faults across the south of England.

Met Office forecaster Amanda Townsend said: ""It's going to be an extremely windy day, and a squall that is moving towards Hampshire from the north will bring even higher winds and heavy rain early this afternoon."

The highest speeds recorded were at The Needles at the western end of the Isle of Wight, with speeds of over 80 miles per hour.

A spokesman for the Coastguard said: "The weather is keeping everyone at home. "We have seen wind speeds hit nearly 70 mph hour which is storm force ten but over the course of the morning its due to reach violent storm force 11.

"A lot of commercial ships are taking shelter round the back of the Isle of Wight."

High winds were also blamed as operations at the Southampton Container Terminals ground to a halt, leaving lorry drivers queuing for hours to load.

At its busiest, queues of lorries snaked from Dockgate 20 out onto the road as waiting times reached over six hours.

The delays sparked outrage among lorry drivers, who blamed the port's controversial Vehicle Booking System (VBS), in which lorries are allocated specific time slots for loading.

A spokesman said: "The container terminal has been closed this morning due to the high winds.

"It will be closed until the wind drops, which at the moment could be until after midday."