A huge wind turbine - twice the size of Nelson's Column - was completely destroyed to tatters by 50mph strong winds.
The £2,000,000 wind turbine was erect in South Wales and collapsed after running at breakneck speeds for more than four hours.
The 300ft turbine's propellers were forced to spin twice as fast as they were designed to due to powerful gales, before it crumpled completely.
And people in the nearby village of Gilfach Goch, near Bridgend, spoke of the horror that ensued. They reported that the sound of it coming down was like ' thunder and lightning'.
Villagers reported of waking up around 6.50am on February 14 to a huge noise as it echoed around the valley below them.
One resident said at the time: "It was around 7am and fairly dark. My wife has stables about half a mile from the wind farm.
"She said she heard odd pulsing noises and then heard the crash about 30 minutes later."
Another neighbour said: "A wind turbine fell over in the wind farm on my village this morning and I thought it was thunder and lighting but how the hell does a wind turbine fall over?
"Apparently it was creaking and banging all night before it collapsed and one woman thought it was her neighbours tumble dryer."
And a fellow villager described what happened as 'a bang like thunder early hours'.
The 29-turbine Pant Y Wal wind farm opened in 2013 and makes enough power for 19,000 homes.
Since the incident, villagers were left questioning how the turbine could have fallen apart during the winds, and demanded officials check the status of neighbouring turbines.
Nordex - the company that manufactured the turbine - investigated the incident and has since confirmed the turbine was destroyed in the freak weather.
A report found that power failure caused the blades to turn uncontrolled in the ghastly winds.
A spokesman for Nordex said: "A Root Cause Analysis investigation determined that a technical issue, starting within an Uninterrupted Power Supply cabinet for one of the blades, triggered an unprecedented chain of events in quick succession.
"This disabled the main power supply and the backup power supply to each blade of the pitch system, therefore all three blades of the wind turbine were left without power resulting in a fixed state.
"The wind speed conditions on the day increased putting the wind turbine into an overspeed condition until it collapsed."
The spokesperson for Nordex added: "Temporary measures are being implemented to reduce the likelihood further.
"A permanent solution is being developed to mitigate the residual likelihood."
