Eight killed in storm weekend as Met office warns of more rain

Hundreds of families had to be rescued as torrential rain lashed Britain over the weekend leading to 227 separate flood warnings.

The Environment Agency warned clean up efforts are likely to be hampered with the forecast of further rain in the coming days and the prospect of more flooding.

A 17-year-old girl, from Thamesmead in south east London, died after the 4x4 vehicle she was travelling in overturned and plunged into a swollen river in Powys, mid-Wales on Friday.

The teenager was on the last day of an adventure break, and was in a convoy of three vehicles attempting to cross a ford near the Llyn Brianne reservoir.

Police believe the tyres of the Land Rover Discovery lost their grip before the vehicle was swept away into a larger river, where it overturned in 5ft of water.

The male driver, who managed to escape along with another female passenger, is believed to have underestimated the depth of the stream.

Two off-duty paramedics who were also on the holiday, attempted to save the teenager, but she was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.

Her parents are understood to have travelled from their home on Saturday to identify their daughter.

At least seven other people died as a result of the severe weather with more than 1,000 homes evacuated in the Northumberland town of Morpeth.

Wales and southwest England bore the brunt of the deluge, with the wettest 48 hours on record. Parts of Wales received a month's rainfall in a day.

Emergency services said they had been working around the clock after being inundated with calls from people trapped in their cars.

Hundreds of people left the Bestival music festival on the Isle of Wight early after the campsite turned into mud beds.

An Environment Agency spokesman said: "The threat of flooding is likely to increase - we cannot say how serious it might be until the rain has stopped falling."

The persistent rainfall is due to the unusual movement of the jet stream, the high-level winds that bring in weather fronts across the Atlantic.

The Met Office's seasonal forecast for autumn indicates a return to drier and warmer weather, but those conditions may not materialise until October.

September could follow August as the one of the wettest on record. Farmers have warned that crops could be seriously affected unless there is a respite from the rain.