stormy weather - broadband hangover

[#1]

Hi we had some heavy rain and storms last week. When things quietened down the next day my broadband was down for a couple of hourse. The router showed not connected. I thought it was just me so I was rebooting, and unplugging all the while but chatting to friends confirmed a wider problem.
Anyway - we had a rumble of thunder yesterday but all was well last night but this morning no broadband again for about an hour.
Being quite rural its a BT only echange so I assume that is where the problem was. IS there anywhere I can check out BT problems. The plusnet exchange checker doesnt look as if it has been updated for over a month. Is there an alternative?

[#2]

Hi there,
I've just been through my BT emails and there hasn't been an acknowledged outage at your exchange in the last 48 hours.
Is your connection still down?

[#3]

Thanks James all up and well thanks.
I've posted here before about regular loss of connection. Because my Belkin router doesnt reconnect immediatly I'm forced into restarting it quite often. Most of the time it comes back up with a connection. After these last 2 storms it didntfor a little while. It's back now (actually came back after around 30 mins). Perhaps the router is on the blink. or BT didn't log the problem.
If the problem keeps cropping up then it will time for a new router. Netgear products seemed to be favoured here I think. I guess I cant have a plusnet one as I took the discount for signing on for a long contract. You cant have your cake, and eat it.