Strong winds and rain lashed Britain yesterday and warnings have been issued of more flooding this weekend.

Some areas had more than half a month’s rainfall in less than 24 hours and gusts of wind reached 50mph as the storms spread across the country from the South West.

A 17-year-old girl died last night after the 4x4 she was travelling in overturned and plunged into a swollen river in Powys, Mid Wales. The teenager was one of three people airlifted to hospital after the incident in a remote area of forestry.

Earlier in the day, a man and a woman died when they crashed into a tree as they drove through torrential rain and high winds in Plymouth.

By last night the Environment Agency had issued one severe flood warning, 37 standard flood warnings and 140 flood watches. The Met Office issued ten severe weather warnings covering Wales, Northern Ireland and most of England.

Wales was particularly badly hit, with about 2in (50mm) of rainfall causing flooding in homes and schools and a landslide on the eastern edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park.

First Great Western cancelled all train services from Swansea and ferries from Holyhead to Dublin were stopped. In Welshpool a man aged 60 had to be winched out of his car by an RAF helicopter after becoming stranded in a flooded river.

In South Wales more than 700 council workers were moved out of the civic centre in Bridgend when a river flooded. Two women were rescued when their cars became stuck under bridges - one near Bridgend, the other in Merthyr Tydfil. The Environment Agency said: “Because we’ve had such a wet few months, the ground is really saturated. With all this rain now, the water is not being soaked up by the ground.”

John Mosedale, from the Environment Agency Wales, said that the principality faced the severest risk of flooding for 30 years. “This summer has been very unusual,” he said. “In my 30 years of dealing with floods this is the worst in my recollection of it being so damp.

“It has kept the rivers pretty much topped up to a point we would expect to be getting around October time.”

Flooding also brought havoc in the South West. In Gloucestershire emergency services were put on high alert in case of a repeat of the deluges that devastated the county last summer and in January. A primary school and main roads were closed and dozens of private properties were inundated. After Carol Pritchard’s house in Lydney was flooded last year, it had “taken seven months to get everything sorted out.”

Ms Pritchard, 65, said: “Now everything has been ruined and we’ve got to start all over again. I feel very angry because everyone knew about this problem yet they allowed it to happen again.”

In Bere Alston, Devon, a man suffered neck injuries after a tree branch, felled by the strong wind and lashing rain, crashed into his car. Four other drivers had to be rescued from rising floodwater which reached heights up to 3ft (0.9m).