I don't expect this has reached your news, but we had a little bit of a wind problem over here in london today. I caught my share of it feeding the pigs in the early stages when it was just a very wet thunder storm and that was quite bad enough! (the farm is only a 20 miles from the very centre of London)

Sadly up to 100s of people will not be able to be in their houses for Christmas, but nobody was killed, just a few bumps and bruises as far as i know... but there is a lighter side to it, which you will surely have missed... the AMAZING people they interviewed about it on the BBC news.

They were obviously struggling to find anyone who had actually seen the thing.

witness number one was fairly sane, "i was just about to get my camera when the window blew in, then i thought perhaps it would be a good idea to hide behind a wall"...
but witness number two blew my socks away
"I thought it was smoke, then i realised it was roof tiles and all sorts, i was just so surprised, you dont expect something like that at this time of day" (so it would have been completely expected in the afternoon then?!?)
Now perhaps those of you who are used to such things can enlighten me, but do torandos have times of day??? And in any case, there have been very few sightings in the uk at all, let alone in built up areas... very very strange.

also if anyone knows anything about the weather, why are we having thunder storms in the cold, i thought these things only happened when it was hot and humid?

The Birmingham tornado (though not as big as the US ones) went right past the end of my road a year or so ago - the mess was everywhere - branches, roof tiles, chimney pots..... trees down house roofs off.... it was kinda wierd seeing it all over again in London. Just before the tornado here, they sky went very dark and there were a few huge cracks of thunder, so maybe it is related to a thunder storm.

According to the BBC weather site, thunder and lightening is caused by colliding ice crystals inside thunderclouds. Electrical charges are built up as the crystals move around and eventually discharges as lightening. The air around the particles heats up very quickly to silly temperatures (in the tens of thousands of degrees), which causes soundwaves = thunder.
Apparently all the initial energy is caused by rising clouds, where the water vapour condenses and then freezes quickly - making the ice crystals collide which makes the lightening, and so on.

I guess then, cos it's cold, the clouds are going to be colder and more full of ice, so the chance of a storm is greater. I think summer storms are more to do with warm air meeting cold air, which makes the warm air contract and then the whole process starts (I think).

In a thundercloud are lots of up and down draughts of air and sometimes these can spiral and cause a funnel cloud, which , if it gets to ground level, can cause a tornado.

My Dad's a bit of a weather watcher and I think he's passed the geeky weather thing on to me...

Weather lecture over......

thanks!... i was ill for the week we were studying weather at uni, and i never quite caught up with it all!