Flooding and severe storms led to the deaths of at least eight people and the evacuation of hundreds of families as relentless rain fell across the country over the weekend.

A geologist died when he was buried by a mudslide in the Cotswolds and a teenage girl was killed when a car overturned in a stream during an adventure holiday in Wales.

Flooding is likely to worsen over the coming days as rainwater drains into river systems, the Environment Agency said yesterday. The agency issued 72 flood warnings for England and Wales, three of them severe, and placed 146 areas under flood watch. By this morning the severe warnings had been lifted and others had been downgraded. There were five flood warnings in Scotland.

The North East has been the most seriously affected but flash floods have also hit parts of Yorkshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

The Met Office issued a severe weather warning for tomorrow covering northwest England, West Wales, southwest Scotland and the whole of Northern Ireland. It forecasts prolonged storms with to up to 3cm of rain.

Wales has had the wettest 48 hours on record with some parts of the country getting a month’s rainfall in a day.

A teenager died on the final day of an adventure holiday when her car plunged into floodwater in a remote area of forest in Powys on Friday.

The 17-year-old girl from Thamesmead, southeast London, was in one of three 4x4 vehicles driving along a sheep track when its tyres lost their grip as it tried to cross a stream.

Police believe the driver may have underestimated the depth of the stream and the vehicle was swept away into a larger river, where it overturned in five feet of water.

There was no mobile phone signal in the area and one of the other vehicles had to travel three miles to the nearest farm for help. The driver and another female passenger were kept in hospital overnight suffering from hypothermia and shock.

A mudslide in Stroud, Gloucestershire, buried a geologist who was inspecting a trench on a building site on Friday. Alex Wright, 27, a soil engineer, was declared dead at the scene but conditions were so treacherous that rescuers could not retrieve his body until yesterday afternoon.

Mr Wright, a graduate of Imperial College London, worked for Cotswold Geotech Ltd. He was also an assistant leader of the 7th Cheltenham (Charlton Kings) Scout Group.

His mother, Shelley Wright, 53, said: “Alex was an incredibly giving person who always wanted to give something back to the community. He had been with his partner, Maz, for a year and they were going to get married.”

A young couple were killed in Plymouth when their car skidded off a road during a heavy storm on Friday. They were named yesterday as Barry Rowe and his girlfriend, Rebecca Hoynes, both 30.

A taxi driver died yesterday morning when his car skidded off the main road alongside the swollen River Severn at Minsterworth, Gloucestershire. A motorcyclist from Sheffield was killed when he hit a tree branch that had fallen during gales at Scotch Corner, North Yorkshire, on Friday

A woman was taken to hospital yesterday suffering from shock and hypothermia after trying in vain to rescue a middle-aged woman from the sea at Barton on Sea, Hampshire. Another swimmer died after being pulled from the sea at Perranporth in Cornwall on Saturday afternoon. Rescuers braved 4ft waves and force 6-7 winds.

In Pickering, North Yorkshire, a lifeboat crew was on standby to help to evacuate the town after a beck burst its banks yesterday. Campaigners have called for better defences for the town for years, but in 2004 a proposed £6.7 million scheme was shelved.

In York the River Ouse rose 13 feet above its normal summer level but council officers were expecting temporary defence works to hold back the waters when they reached their peak last night. More than 40 homes in Halesowen, West Midlands, and Frankley, Birmingham, were flooded to a depth of three feet. A mini-tornado was reported in the Northfield area of the city and ambulance crews evacuated patients from a brain injury unit in the suburb of Selly Oak after flooding.

The Bestival music festival on the Isle of Wight was turned into a sea of mud with reports of hundreds of people leaving early. One festivalgoer wrote on a website: “Left 2 days early . . . abandoned my tent there . . . shivering cold, caked head to toe in mud . . . barely saw a band at all. It was the most wretched 2 nights of my life.”