Two eyewitness videos filmed in the North Yorkshire town of Tadcaster, England late yesterday showed the town's 18th century stone bridge crumbling into a racing river.

Torrential rain and gale force winds have battered northern Britain, cutting power to thousands of homes and forcing some to evacuate flooded streets today in the third major storm in a month.

The Environment Agency said Britain had faced an extraordinary period of severe weather and flooding in December, with consultants PwC warning that the latest deluge from Storm Frank could take total losses above £3 billion.

Further heavy rain was predicted to fall as the latest storm swept across northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, sparking warnings of more significant flooding.