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A potential tornado battered a UK town on Monday as the Met Office warned of severe wind across much of the country.
The wind damaged fences and left debris scattered across streets in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, just before 7.45am on Monday.
The Met Office said it was not possible to verify if the strong gusts in Staffordshire was a tornado, adding that the winds forecast this morning “had some potential” to create them.
Stephen Dixon, Met Office spokesperson, said: “Tornadoes do happen in the UK and they’re generally short-lived in nature, but around 30 a year are reported on average.”
“Today there have been some reports of some particularly impactful winds. The fronts that were moving southwards this morning had some potential for some short-lived tornadoes within them, but we would need to assess the impact.”
The Met Office website defines a tornado as a “rapidly rotating column of air that reaches the base of a storm cloud and the Earth’s surface”.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow…