Tornadoes in England?

Sky News reported this morning that England is on tornado alert!

England isn't known for it's tornadoes and whilst it's unlikely to be anything like those which devastate the USA each year, it shows the way the weather patterns are continuing to change around us.

Apparently the weather conditions are exactly what is needed for the creation of tornadoes and the broadcast told us that the west of England should be particularly watchful throughout today! (Hmm that's where I live!)

Keep me posted if you hear any more!

Ross

There was a programme on TV last year that stated that, in fact, the UK has more tornado's than the US. Its just that they are very small and most dont do any damage.

The year before last I saw 3 funnels coming down in 2 weeks, and one of those was in Birmingham, the other was a water spout off the south coast

Just to be a bit picky here it was more tornado's relitive to size. In terms of just numbers US has more, but we in the UK have more for the amount of land mass we've got.

I'm headed West in a few days, so hopefully I get to see one. I've always wanted to and England is the best place, large enough to be fascinating, small enough not to suck you up and dump you miles away.

I've got my fingers crossed.

Thats odd, I had a dream last night about a tornado.

Ive only seen a tornado here in london once before. It was small, like a beginning of big tornado. Looked scary. Right above me, but it didnt get any bigger. Thank god.

Having living in the West country for most of my days, I have never seen a tornado in the UK.

Are the weather patterns to create a tornado the same as say in the US. I have not seen the huge thunder cells that can led to tornados in the US

What starts them off in the UK (I think) is the battle between the warm Gulf stream air coming North and the cold Arctic winds coming south, that along with a lot of cereal fields causing updrafts does it.

No, the UK doesn't have more tornadoes than the U.S. On another forum, someone stated the same thing. I proceeded to show them that my STATE usually has more tornadoes than the UK has in a year. In fact, several times, there have been more tornadoes in a single DAY in the U.S. than the UK gets all year.

On land mass size, the UK does have more


www.torro.org.uk...
8 How does this compare with other nations?
In order to accurately compare tornado frequencies between different countries, land area must be taken into account - after all, a large nation will report many tornadoes simply because of its large land area. When land areas are taken into account, the United Kingdom actually has the highest frequency of reported tornadoes per unit area in the world. This was first recognised by an American meteorologist, Dr. T. Fujita, in 1973.

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I did actually see one this week a couple of hours after the post above, but it was very thin and lasted just a few seconds and unfortunately before I could get my camera out!

Ross