A regional daily saw a huge spike in visitors to its website as it covered the storms which swept across the city at the weekend.

The Herald in Plymouth saw the number of daily unique visitors to the site on Friday double to 71,865 from its average daily traffic as it provided live coverage of the heavy rain, strong winds and high tides.

Of Friday’s website visitors, 27,243 clicked on a story headlined “Live updates: Plymouth on flood alert as storm sweeps in”.

Traffic for the website remained high over the weekend, as the southern coast along with other parts of the UK were battered by severe weather.

The Herald’s website had 57,225 visitors on Saturday and 45,705 on Sunday, as its journalists provided live coverage.

Popular stories included news that waves had wrecked a beach café in Seaton, in Cornwall, and the ongoing search for missing teenager Harry Martin.

Senior reporter Sam Blackledge said: “Weather stories always generate healthy online traffic for us, but the most recent updates attracted an unprecedented number of visitors.”