December tornado hits London

[greenman3610]

http://today.reuters.com/News/CrisesArticle.aspx?storyId=L0783616

LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - A small but severe tornado hit a residential area of northwest London on Thursday, injuring six people, ripping roofs off homes and tearing down walls.

Television footage showed a trail of destruction in Kensal Rise, with trees uprooted and cars damaged by falling debris. Tornadoes are very rare in British cities.

Local resident Daniel Bidgood was in his house when the tornado, which he said was about 20 metres (yards) across, smashed his windows.

"It was very large and certainly very powerful," he told BBC television. "You could see it ripping up heavy chunks of mortar and smashing it into cars."

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Britain experienced between 30 and 40 tornadoes in an average year, he said, but most were weak and they very rarely hit built-up areas. In July 2005, a tornado in Birmingham, central England, damaged dozens of homes.
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The Met Office issued severe weather warnings for southern England, with heavy rains and winds gusting up to 70 miles per hour, after the warmest autumn in the last 347 years. (Additional reporting by Jeremy Lovell, Tim Castle and Jon Hemming)

[malaise]

1. Pictures

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6217898.stm

[LSK]

2. i did not realize they had twisters in the UK

[magellan]

3. Oh yes

Gales are the more common dangerous wind event in the UK, but they do get tornadoes too. Typically they're small ones (<F1 category), but every now and then in a great while they have a major supercell event.

[Xithras]

5. Twisters can occur anywhere in the world.

There's nowhere else on Earth where they're as common as Tornado Alley in the U.S., but tornadoes have been spotted on every continent except Antarctica (they're entirely possible there, but most of the continent is uninhabited so none have been spotted yet). You're far less likely to be killed by a tornado in London than in Oklahoma City, but you never completely escape them.

[greenman3610]

6. twisters in London, yes,...but in December?

not so much.

[Xithras]

7. Are they seasonal in Europe?

In California, most of our tornadoes hit in the winter as warm Pacific air collides with cold Arctic air, so "tornado season" here is generally November-March (they're never common, but when they happen, that's when they'll happen). Northwestern Europe is a tornado zone as well, because cold Arctic air collides with air warmed by Atlantic Gulf Stream currents in that area, which can spawn the vortexes. I would assume that Britain's tornado season would be more similar to California's, in that it's driven by ocean temperatures and arctic stores, than it would be to the midwestern US, where air currents are heavily affected by the Rocky Mountains and the always warm Gulf of Mexico.

[smirkymonkey]

4. This is starting to remind me of that movie,

I think it was called "The Day After Tomorrow".

Although it's not as extreme, how long will it be before we start seeing weather & geological events that are more frequent and deadly than ever.

I think this is pretty scary. It happened so suddenly, without warning.