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1638
Thunderstorm · Devon
The Great Thunderstorm of Widecombe
On Sunday 21 October 1638, a violent thunderstorm hit Widecombe-in-the-Moor on Dartmoor during the afternoon service. A great ball of fire crashed into the church of St Pancras. It smashed windows, knocked stones from the tower and filled the church with smoke and the smell of sulphur.
Four people died and around sixty were hurt. Scientists today think it may have been ball lightning, one of the strangest things in all of weather. Local legend blamed the Devil, who was said to have dropped by to collect a gambler.
~60 people injured inside the church
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1703
Windstorm · Southern England & Wales
The Great Storm of 1703
Over the night of 26 to 27 November 1703 (Old Style calendar), a hurricane-force storm tore across southern Britain. It wrecked hundreds of ships, ripped roofs off all over London and destroyed the first Eddystone Lighthouse, with its builder Henry Winstanley inside.
Thousands of people died, most of them sailors at sea. The writer Daniel Defoe collected eyewitness stories from all over the country and published them as The Storm, one of the first weather reports ever written like journalism.
Thousands lost, mostly at sea
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1952
Thunderstorm flood · Devon
The Lynmouth Flood
On 15 August 1952, thunderstorms sat over Exmoor and dropped about 9 inches (229 mm) of rain in a single day onto ground that was already soaked. The East and West Lyn rivers turned into torrents, carrying boulders and trees straight down into the little harbour village of Lynmouth.
Thirty-four people died and dozens of homes and bridges were swept away. The village was rebuilt with a much wider river channel, so the water has room to rush through next time.
229 mm of rain in 24 hours
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1975
Thunderstorm · London
The Hampstead Storm
On the hot afternoon of 14 August 1975, a thunderstorm got stuck over Hampstead in north London and simply refused to move. In under three hours it dropped about 170 mm of rain, more than two months' worth, on one small patch of the city.
Streets turned into rivers and basements flooded, while a few miles away the sun shone and the ground stayed dry. It's still one of the heaviest short bursts of rain ever measured in Britain.
~170 mm of rain in under 3 hours
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1981
Tornado outbreak · England & Wales
A hundred tornadoes in one day
For its size, Britain gets more tornadoes than almost anywhere in the world, but 23 November 1981 was something else. As a sharp cold front swept across the country, it spun up 104 tornadoes in about five hours, from Anglesey to East Anglia.
Most were small and short-lived, but they lifted roofs, flipped caravans and flattened trees. It still holds the record for the largest tornado outbreak ever recorded in Europe.
104 tornadoes in about 5 hours
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1987
Windstorm · South-east England
The Great Storm of 1987
The evening before, BBC weatherman Michael Fish famously told viewers that a woman had rung to ask whether a hurricane was on the way, and said there wasn't. Strictly speaking he was right, but overnight on 15 to 16 October 1987 a storm with hurricane-force gusts roared across south-east England.
About 15 million trees came down, including six of the seven oaks that gave Sevenoaks its name. Eighteen people died in England. The storm led to big changes in how the Met Office forecasts and warns about severe weather.
15 million trees blown down
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2004
Thunderstorm flood · Cornwall
The Boscastle Flood
On 16 August 2004, thunderstorms kept forming over the same hills above Boscastle, one after another. Around 200 mm of rain fell in a few hours, and a wall of water raced down the valley into the village, sweeping dozens of cars out into the harbour.
In one of the biggest peacetime rescues in Britain, helicopters lifted around 100 people off rooftops and out of trees. Amazingly, nobody died.
~100 people airlifted to safety
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2005
Tornado · West Midlands
The Birmingham Tornado
On 28 July 2005, a powerful thunderstorm spawned a strong tornado that tore through Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath and Moseley in Birmingham. In just a few minutes it ripped roofs off houses, uprooted big trees and tossed cars around.
Nineteen people were injured and the damage ran to tens of millions of pounds. It was one of the strongest tornadoes to hit a British city in modern times, and proof that twisters aren't just an American thing.
19 injured, nobody killed
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2022
Named storm · Southern Britain
Storm Eunice
On 18 February 2022, Storm Eunice brought rare red warnings for wind to parts of southern England and Wales. A gust of 122 mph was measured at the Needles on the Isle of Wight, the strongest ever recorded in England.
Eunice tore part of the roof off the O2 Arena in London, cut power to well over a million homes and stopped trains across the south. Good forecasts and early warnings helped keep people safely indoors.
122 mph England's strongest gust
British weather records
Record breakers
The wildest storm numbers ever measured in the UK.
173mph
The strongest gust ever measured in the UK, on the summit of Cairn Gorm in Scotland on 20 March 1986.
142mph
The strongest low-level gust in the UK, at Fraserburgh in Aberdeenshire on 13 February 1989.
104tornadoes
Spun up in a single day on 23 November 1981. Still Europe's biggest tornado outbreak on record.
~30a year
Tornadoes reported in the UK in an average year. Most are small, brief and over open countryside.
2015
The year the Met Office and Met Éireann began naming storms. The very first was Storm Abigail.
1638
The Widecombe fireball, one of the earliest detailed accounts of what may have been ball lightning.