London hit by twister ??

LONDON, England (CNN) -- A tornado hit a residential area of London on Thursday, injuring at least six people, according to ambulance service staff.

Police were alerted to the tornado in north-west London at around 11 a.m., a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said.

One man was taken to hospital suffering from serious head injuries, and five people were treated at the scene for minor injuries and shock.

The storm, with winds of around 150 mph (240 kph), ripped roofs off some homes, tore down walls and trees, and left streets strewn with debris. One car was buried under fallen bricks, video footage from the scene showed.

"I could see a huge cloud rolling up the street, making this tremendous sound," resident Daniel Bidgood told the BBC. "I went to try to take a picture of it but a shower of debris smashed all the windows of my house."

Another eyewitness, Sally Johnson, said she thought she was going to die. "All the cars and the windows, everything (was) smashed in," she told Sky. "There's debris everywhere, you can hardly walk."

"It was like some sort of cyclone," said resident Tim Klotz.

"I looked up through a skylight and debris was falling through the air. I heard what seemed like large, clay dominoes falling, which I think were roof tiles," Klotz said.

Local authorities said several houses may have to be demolished due to damage caused by the tornado.

Several hundred people were expected to spend a night in emergency accommodation as workers tried to make buildings safe.

Experts say that while Britain experiences more than 30 tornadoes a year, it is rare for them to cause damage on the scale seen in London on Thursday.

Local weather reports said warmer than normal temperatures this fall contributed to formation of the tornado.

LINK

May not be conspiracy related, but it does point out-

Local weather reports said warmer than normal temperatures this fall contributed to formation of the tornado.

and confirm that the weather globally, is changing. It reminds me of The Day After Tommorow. I thought that the movie was bogus but it looks likewe may see the effects and occurences listed above with more frequency and severity.

Yes this is strange for december.

Here is the link to the BBC story:

news.bbc.co.uk...

i wonder if asala was near to this?

i don't think you really need a cospiracy in this particular bit of ATS.

Well what a day,


The weather went crazy here in London about 10.45. It was a calm breezy day,

Suddenly its started raining, I was thinking Gosh where did this come from, Next the wind started really acting odd, it was so everywhere and manic, then hail stones started whooshing about in all direction,

I did at that point think, ohhh this looks tornadoish, then a crack of lightning and a bang, then it died out,

So i just went on with what i was doing, Until i saw the new stations in the North of London reporting the tornado, I'm in the NW London, so i was like "wow " did we pretty much share the same part of the weather, and pretty thankful that it was not here,


For a "mini" tornado this has caused quite alot of damage and really lucky this hit after most have went to work and school, I think this would have been much worse if there had have been more people in at the time,

700 people are displaced tonight,

The weather has also caused flights to stay put in some airports, Trains to halt and ferries to stay in port,

Its still a bit out out there at the sec and i would not be to surprised top see another, but hopefully if they are right it would be at a lower scale,


There was a plane caught up in also, People on a flight from London to Glasgow reported terrible turbulence, and they feared the plane would drop from the sky, many came of the flight crying,

Most did not know till they got home and switched on the news that the flew by a tornado .

[edit on 8-12-2006 by asala]

Although tornadoes are more common in the UK in the autumn, it's barely winter yet and we get them in the UK in December somewhere or other most years.

Interestingly this tornado struck not far from one on 8th December 1954 - which news footage from the time shows caused much more damage than yesterdays, and was probably one of the strongest to have hit Britain in modern times.

March 29. 1976 our town where I went to school was hit by a class 5 tornado. A massive cell. Compared to London, it made the twister look like a baby, as a whole town was decimated.

What was interesting was it only hit a couple of blocks, not like the one that I witnessed in 1976.

I have seen funnel clouds form where I live here in the UK. What amazes me though is there is no early warning system and people don't know to keep away from windows and to get in either a basement, or in a hall with no windows and to cover themselves.

At the end of the day, no matter the size of a twister, they can still be lethal. I am British having schooled in America. America is more ofay at educating people to what they need to do to protect themselves in the event of a tornado.

A tornado in December is strange, but not unknown.

Originally posted by rachel07

I have seen funnel clouds form where I live here in the UK. What amazes me though is there is no early warning system and people don't know to keep away from windows and to get in either a basement, or in a hall with no windows and to cover themselves.

TORRO (The British Tornado and Storm Research Organisation) are working on introducing tornado warnings - these have been produced on an experimental basis for a couple of years now. However, unlike in the US, our tornadoes aren't spawned by trackable supercells (they come from normal thunderstorms or, as yesterday, squall lines) and we don't have doppler radar. Which makes it almost impossible to predict where and when a tornado may form. Best we can do is say that the synoptic conditions are such that tornadoes could potentially form anywhere in a given part of the UK.

As it happens, yesterday it was felt that there was little likelihood of any tornadoes forming, although in a Convective Discussion issued by TORRO the possiblity of them was not entirely discounted.