Based on its construction, the sentence in question needs a verb to make sense. Answer Choice “(B) continuing” couldn’t be the correct answer because the progressive form of the verb is grammatically faulty here. Answer Choice “(C) continuously” is an adverb and doesn’t fit into the sentence construction. This leaves only Answer Choice “(A) continued” and Answer Choice “(D) continues” as the only possible answers.
On inspection, we find that the subject of the dependent clause is the compound subject “strong winds and torrential rains.” This subject is plural, so Answer Choice “(D) continues” will result in a subject-verb disagreement; of course, it could have been a correct answer if it were in the present-tense plural form “continue.” This being the case, Answer Choice “(A) continued,” with the verb in the past tense, is the only possible correct answer. Recall that in English grammar, the past tense form of the verb is the same regardless of whether the subject is singular or plural.