A “tornado” ripped the roof from a house and parts of England were flooded as high winds and heavy rain hit the country over the weekend.
The Met Office has said that more wet weather could disrupt parts of southern and southeast England today as Storm Ciarán heads towards the UK. The Environment Agency (EA) has issued 75 flood warnings for areas that are expected to be deluged, along with 180 flood alerts, where flooding is possible.
The storm will “bring very strong winds and heavy rain to southern parts of the UK on Wednesday night and into Thursday”, forecasters said. Ciarán follows Storm Babet, which struck from October 18 to 21, and “resulted in the most severe and widespread disruptive weather impacts of 2023 so far”, it said.
With multiple yellow rain warnings for swathes of the country until Wednesday, Kate Marks, from the EA, said: “People must avoid driving through floodwater, as just 30cm of flowing water is enough to move your car.”
She urged members of the public to sign up for flood warnings and updates on X/Twitter and on the EA and government websites.
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Chris Almond, deputy chief meteorologist at the Met Office, said: “Winds associated with Storm Ciarán are likely to gust to 80mph along the south coast of England, with a small risk of somewhere exposed seeing 90mph, and winds could even gust up to 50 or 60 mph further inland.
“This deep low-pressure system will also bring heavy rain to much of the UK but the heaviest rain is expected in southern and western areas, with 20-25mm quite widely across the region but up to 40-60mm potentially over higher ground.
“Heavy and persistent rain will fall on to saturated ground, bringing a risk of ... flooding in areas that are struggling to clean up from the heavy rainfall over the past week or so.”
East Sussex was deluged over the weekend, with flooding at the Priory Meadow shopping centre in Hastings, which was evacuated on Saturday.
Yesterday a caravan park and a Tesco car park in Bognor Regis, West Sussex, were also flooded. The roof of a house was ripped off by winds that residents described as a “tornado”.
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The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation, a research body, told the BBC that a “definite tornado” had hit Littlehampton, West Sussex.
Naomi Theobold, a resident, said it happened “really fast” and “was quite scary”. She said: “All you could see was rain and debris flying around. Our trampoline is in someone else’s garden, neighbours’ cars have been damaged by debris and walls in front gardens have come down.”
