Nick on Storms

When most of us think of tornadoes, we probably think of Tornado Alley in the US. But maybe we should be considering places rather closer to home. I was astonished to discover that the UK actually has more tornadoes per square kilometre than any other country in the world.

On average, we get more than 30 tornadoes a year. Many spin relatively harmlessly across the countryside, but occasionally a tornado scythes through one of our cities. The Sparkbrook area of Birmingham was hit in July 2005. In December 2006, it was north-west London's turn.

Nothing compares to the ferocious intensity of the winds in a tornado. In the most severe twisters, wind speeds have been known to approach 300mph. The damage they cause can be extraordinary.

The energy embodied in a strong wind can be harnessed too of course. We have used the wind's energy to power windmills and sailing ships for many hundreds of years. In fact, it was a British naval officer, Sir Francis Beaufort, who developed a scale for wind speeds more than 200 years ago. His Beaufort Scale is still in use today.

Britain is Europe's windiest country, although more recently we have been rather slow off the mark in using this natural resource to generate power. In Denmark, by contrast, about a fifth of the electricity they use is generated by wind turbines.

But even as we harness more of the wind's energy to do our work, we will still be susceptible to the occasional wind storm that brings devastation. The storm of 18 January 2007 killed 14 people in Britain and caused death and disruption across Europe as far as Ukraine.

Probably the worst in living memory was the Great Storm of 1987. No one who lived through that one will ever forget the pictures of devastation across southern England. No less that 15 million trees were uprooted and the total bill for damages was £1.5 billion.

^ Top