It was bad - but perhaps not as bad as many had feared.

Ophelia, downgraded from a hurricane to a post-tropical storm, wreaked havoc as it battered the island on Monday night.

At the storm blew in, emergency services, Manx Utilities and the Department of Infrastructure were soon working flat-out as they responded to scores of call-outs.

Alan Hardinge, operations manager in the highways division, said his team dealt with no fewer than 330 calls between 8pm and midnight and a further 40 calls after midnight.

By the morning, the DoI had cleared some 130 trees in 17 hours but police warned motorists there was still a lot of debris on the roads.

Power lines also came down as winds gusted up to 80mph in exposed locations.

Flights and sailings were cancelled and shops closed early.

Schools remained open but after-school clubs were cancelled.

The Palace Health club was closed the following day and all exercise classes cancelled after a section of felt roofing at the rear of the Best Western Palace Hotel blew off in the storm.

But for the most part, structural damage was limited.

And fears that coastal overtopping would cause major flooding proved unfounded.

At Castletown, residents on Hope Street waited anxiously for high tide at 10pm, sandbags stacked against their front doors.

Work on a multi-million flood defence project began but with a construction programme scheduled for an estimated at 45 weeks, it is not yet complete.

Emergency services had concerns about possible flooding but in the event the new flood defences went untested as the water level remained well below the new harbour wall.

It would have been a different matter if a 1.5m storm surge had coincided with high tide rather in the afternoon.

Neil Young at the Met Office said the strongest gusts recorded at Ronaldsway were 78mph at 5.13pm.

But on Douglas breakwater a gust of 87mph was recorded at 5pm and at Brandywell at 5.20pm the highest wind speed measured was 94mph and 95mph was recorded on Snaefell at 6pm.

Mr Hardinge at the DoI said he had 30 staff working through to midnight - and most were back in work at 8am the next morning.

He said: ’It probably could have been worse. But there was a substantial amount of trees down.

’The saving grace was coastal flooding, as the height of the tide was fairly low.

’If they had been higher there would have been far more problems.

’It was a great team effort with all the emergency services, Civil Defences, Douglas Council and Manx Utilities pulling together.’