Strong winds are yet again set to batter the county as the wild weather shows no sign of disappearing.

A severe weather warning has been issued to West Sussex with gusts of up to 70mph on Monday morning.

Brighton will see gusts of nearly 40mph.

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A Met Office spokesman said: "South to southwesterly gales and locally severe gales will develop across west Wales and parts of southwest and southern England during the early hours of Monday, easing from the west later on Monday morning.

"The public should be aware of the risk of disruption to travel, particularly as the gales will be combined with heavy rain."

While not severe enough for a warning, heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday.

Met Office forecaster Charlie Powell said the unsettled weather looks set to continue into the new year.

"It certainly looks a very wet and windy picture," he said.

"On New Year's Eve another band of rain will push in from the west. It will be a dry start to Wednesday but the unsettled weather will be around for quite some time into the new year."

It follows a tumultuos week of weather that left thousands without power and swathes of the county flooded since Monday night.

UK Power Networks reported this morning that 38 homes were still without power.

A spokesman for the company said: "Due to the severity of the storm damage it may take until the end of the week to restore power supplies to the final single premises affected in these areas, though work is continuing to reconnect most of the remaining supplies as quickly as possible."

The Environment Agency (EA) said the predicted rainfall meant there is a "continued heightened flood risk" across southern England, especially south-west England where river levels remain high and the ground is already saturated.

Craig Woolhouse, the EA's head of flood incident management, said: "Our thoughts are with those who have been affected by flooding over Christmas. Our teams remain out on the ground working around the clock to protect communities from flooding.

"With more wet weather expected early next week we are monitoring rivers and working to protect communities from flooding with our partners in the emergency services and local authorities.

"We urge people to stay safe and avoid driving or walking through flood water and visit the Environment Agency website for advice and sign up for flood warnings."

In a statement, regulator Ofgem said: "Energy companies are obliged to do what they reasonably can to get people back on as soon as possible and engineers are working in difficult circumstances to restore power to customers.

"These obligations are backed by strong regulatory incentives put in place by Ofgem on the companies to maintain service levels and restore supplies, these include loss of revenues and awarding compensation payments to customers off supply."

It added: "There are also well established industry processes in place in event of severe weather and loss of supplies to share engineering resources and expertise across the network to help with supply restoration in the areas affected.

"The priority for the energy companies is to reconnect remaining customers and we are monitoring progress with this. In due course it will also be necessary to review events and ensure any further lessons that need to be are learnt."