A freak tornado ripped tiles from a roof and rattled through trees during a five-minute storm that stunned residents. Winds ripped through the Wyken area of Coventry on Tuesday afternoon with properties damaged by the abnormal blast.
The unexpected blustery conditions suddenly took hold on an otherwise bright and calm afternoon with the sudden gusts of wind arriving from nowhere. Paula Tutchener was outside her home in Honiton Road when the freak of nature struck.
She told CoventryLive her family told her she was "going cuckoo" until the realised the incident had caused damage to houses on the street.
She said: "I was in my house and I looked out the window and it was calm as you like. I went out for a fag and there was this wind. I had washing on the line and it was spinning and tangling up and the trees were going crazy. It was madness.
"I went in and didn't think too much of it, then I said to my husband and son later on 'I reckon we had a tornado today'. They just looked at each other and laughed and told me I was going cuckoo.
"Then my neighbour told me she had tiles missing on her roof. I went into our garden and our roof had tiles loose, but my neighbour had gaping holes in theirs. Another neighbour said her blinds started going mad.
"My house is clean, but when I went upstairs there was dust which had come loose from the top of the wardrobe. My house is never dirty so it didn't make sense? I wasn't upstairs so I don't know how that happened.
"It was so bizarre, madness. I couldn't believe what I was seeing because everywhere else was so calm. It lasted about five minutes, then it went calm again. But my husband and son thought I was nuts. But at least my washing dried quickly!"
Local weather expert Steve Jackson said he was unaware of the incident, but suspected the area had experienced a light tornado, which is caused by a rotating column of air between cloud and the surface of the earth. Forecasters describe a light or mini tornado as peeling tiles from some roofs and causing damage to gutters, with branches broken off trees.
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