Do you ever get Tornados on the British Isles?

Jack Flash

Tornadoes tend to occur in mid-latitudes and since they are restricted to land masses this means mainly in the northern hemisphere over the USA, Europe and Asia. But in the UK tornadoes really damaging tornadoes are rare. The TORRO scale (from 1 to 10) has been developed to describe their intensity but TORRO Force 3 is rarely exceeded in the UK. May 27 02, 10:01 AM

Barrow boy

I work in a town called Newmarket (it's actually the home of horse racing) and years ago (in the 60s I think) a tornado passed through a housing estate here. Nobody was killed, the houses lost their roofs, but nevertheless their structures were not fundamentally damaged. This is the worst tornado I believe there has been in my lifetime - by US standards it was obviously pretty tame. May 27 02, 10:55 AM

Gnomon

I remember a few years back, a small tornado hit the south coast of England, crossing a small headland and going back out to sea. It did no damage except to destroy a small observatory belonging to that well known astronomer, Sir Patrick Moore. Seems like he annoyed some weather god with his explanations! May 27 02, 12:38 PM

Oddy	There was one in Monmouthshire , Wales on 2 May this year . Caused little damage and probably wouldn't appear on the scale of what you get hit with in the States . But hey , it was our own tornado and we're proud of it ! May 27 02, 1:24 PM

Griselda

According to a snippett on the local tv news yesterday there was a tornado close to our home town. TV said it uprooted a large oak tree, which, when the tornado died down, landed on a cow killing it instantaneously! This apparently happened close to Haywards Heath in West Sussex. Big news we thought, but didn't even get a mention on the local teletext/ceefax. Begs the question, was it actually a tornado? May 27 02, 10:45 PM

Senior Moments

With the amount of media coverage dedicated to American storm-chasers, you'd think the US had the monopoly on these twisters. It doesn't. It might come as a shock, but the United Kingdom is actually the World's most tornado-prone nation. This fact was calculated by the late Dr. Fujita of Chicago University. He devised the standard method of measuring tornado intensity. Fujita figured that since Britain has an average of 33 tornadoes every year in an area 38 times smaller than the USA, you're twice as likely to witness a tornado here. www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/naturaldisasters/ hurricanes.shtml May 27 02, 11:01 PM

Senior Moments addition

Forecasters say that in Britain conditions for tornadoes are ripe only on about 11 days a year, and the vortices tended to be no more than a few metres in size and normally last less than half an hour. Britain has between 30 and 40 tornadoes every year, mostly in the southern part of the country, but they tend to be small and do little damage. The strongest tornado ever recorded in Britain hit Plymouth in 1810. It was reported to have reached 213 mph -- a T8 rating. In May 1950, a tornado left a 100-mile trail of damage from Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, to Blakeney in Norfolk, and in 1971 astonished witnesses saw a twister move a 90-ton railway engine 50 metres along the track. In January 1998 a 100 mph twister caused an estimated %A3100,000 damage when it hit the Sussex seaside town of Selsey. www.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/europe/UK/10/30/uk.tornadoes/ May 27 02, 11:05 PM

Jac

The Selsey one destroyed Patrick Moore's home observatory among other things. There was also a tornado which reached 90mph at Blenheim in Oxfordshire this April/May (I forget the date because I was over in NC watching tornado warnings myself, I read about it when I got home) and about 4 years ago one wrecked our local garden centre. May 28 02, 8:21 AM

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