Several tornadoes hit central England on Monday, tearing roof tiles off houses and ripping branches from trees.
One witness described the scene in Nuneaton in the west Midlands as ”absolute bedlam” and said the roofs had been ripped off a row of 10 to 15 houses. ”It only lasted a couple of minutes,” he told Sky News. ”It’s devastating.”
”We’ve had a tree down and lots of debris in the road in an area called Buck’s Hill in Nuneaton,” said a spokesperson for Warwickshire police.
The Met office said it had had reports of at least four tornadoes, including in Warwickshire, Northamptonshire and the West Midlands. There were no reports of any injuries.
”When you have winds that are gusting up to 50 miles an hour [80km/h] or so, you can expect there to be quite a lot of damage with branches and tiles being blown off, fence panels coming down and people might even find windows being blown in,” a spokesperson said.
The extreme weather also hit Luton, further south, although authorities played the incident down. ”We have had a couple of fences down,” said a police spokesperson.
Last December, a tornado ripped roofs off homes and tore down walls in a residential area of north-west London, injuring six people and damaging about 100 houses. — Reuters