The Long Stratton Tornado |
 Dave Thurlow, Host |
Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and this is The Weather Notebook. Ten years ago this December, an unexpected tornado hit the village of Long Stratton in England's East Anglia. Robin White paid a visit.
RW: East Anglia's the closest thing the English have to the Midwest. The countryside is wide and flat with enormous prairies of wheat stretching to the horizon. But that's where the resemblance stops... unless you count the strange events in Long Stratton, an East Anglian village, in 1989.
MB: 'It was about two o clock in the afternoon and it became all dark...'
RW: Mrs. Bunn - I kid you not - owns the baker's shop.
MB: '...and there was a fruit and vegetable shop across the road and it had a barrow outside it and that was flying through the air and all the tiles came off the roof... Things fell into the road - it was just like a bomb had been dropped actually...'
RW: The tornado, which swept through Long Stratton was a Fujita scale two. Not a big tornado by Midwestern standards, but big enough to make a memorable impact on a small English village. Peter Moore, was coming back with his wife from the nearby city of Norwich.
PM: 'We heard it on the radio... We phoned my mother in law up because we saw all these fire engines and ambulance and she said it's OK there's no damage at all. (Laughs). Obviously to reassure us.'
RW: In fact, the Moore's stone building was badly smashed and needed $10,000 worth of repairs. No one was injured in the 1989 tornado and Long Stratton rebuilt quickly. But the tornado left villagers with the same sense of wonder you'd find if it'd hit any American town.
MB: 'Why it happened in Long Stratton I don't know.... It just happened.'
Tomorrow on The Weather Notebook, we'll hear that English tornadoes are more common than most people think. Robin White is an independent producer from San Francisco, CA. Thanks to Subaru and the National Science Foundation.