THE atrocious weather which has afflicted North Hampshire in past weeks is set to change to something more seasonal.

The forecast suggests that although there may be a few scattered showers, this weekend should be mainly dry and Sunday will be a bright and sunny day - a far cry from the first 12 days of this month when December's entire average rainfall was exceeded.

Andover itself has escaped much of the disruption, with no injury road accidents due to flooding reported by police. Andover fire brigade station officer Robin Furniss, said: "We seem to have got off lightly but where cottages have been flooded we are only pumping if we can do some good.

"Where the water table has risen the water can be back in the property in half an hour of us pumping it out so we are mainly restricting ourselves to humanitarian help. On Tuesday night for instance we carried an elderly blind man to dry land from a car which had become stuck in floods at Newton Stacey."

Communities along the River Bourne such as Collingbourne Ducis, Tidworth, Shipton Bellinger and Cholderton have lived with the ever-present risk of flooding for several days. The lower Test Valley has also been badly hit as has Sutton Scotney.

The 80mph storms on Tuesday night caused widespread disruption and knocked out power supplies in the Leckford area for a time.

Even when the excess water has drained away, the impact on local finances will continue. Hampshire County Council has spent more than £1 million on repairs and defences to roads since the storms began and Test Valley has issued 6,500 sandbags since October.