Moment Storm Gerrit tornado batters quiet street: Locals describe trees toppling ‘like…

A tornado which left a trail of destruction through a town during Storm Gerrit has been described as a ‘whirlwind of madness’.

Greater Manchester Police declared a major incident on Wednesday night after a supercell thunderstorm hit the Tameside town of Stalybridge.

The tornado damaged 100 homes, sent trees toppling ‘like dominoes’ and wrote off cars as flying debris caused major structural damage while residents hid under their duvets. 

CCTV released by local residents appears to show the moment a quiet street was battered by Storm Gerrit, with debris seen flying through the air before a roof tile impales the bonnet of a BMW car.

Others have shared footage from within their homes, with fine glass seen shattered across furniture in living rooms after windows were smashed in by the storm. 

Stalybridge resident Kerry Hogan described the tornado as ‘bedlam’, while another family feared they were going to die.

Ms Hogan told BBC Radio 5 Live that the tornado ‘lasted a minute, 90 seconds, literally a whirlwind of madness’ and it ‘sounded horrendous’.

‘We couldn’t open the front door as the wind was that bad,’ she said. ‘Lamp-posts were swaying, we watched trees topple like dominoes. All the neighbours were out, it was bedlam.

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‘People have had cars crushed. It was horrific and how nobody has been hurt is unbelievable.’

As well as Stalybridge being struck by a ‘localised tornado’, Scotland was also battered by Storm Gerrit, leading to a major Met Office backlash. 

The UK’s weather service issued yellow warnings, suggesting there was a low chance of severe impacts from the storm which sparked travel chaos with 80mph winds, blizzards and heavy rain. The Met Office has been challenged over whether amber alerts should have been issued – and has pledged to conduct a review.

Maisie Pilkington, another local resident who was impacted by the storm’s tornado in Tameside, told of the moment a tree crashed into her home as she slept.

‘I opened the door and thought ‘oh my God’,’ she told the BBC. ‘The tree’s hit the roof and gone through my bathroom.

‘The whole ceiling of my bathroom is down, the tree’s in the bathroom and the whole tree is being held up by one branch.’

One couple has shared footage of the moment the tornado hit Stalybridge.

Craig and Karen Sanderson were away at the time but came back to find their home and car had been badly damaged.

‘We came back and the house was in wrack and ruin. We have severe roof damage – we have lost 50 to 60 tiles at the front and back of the house,’ Mr Sanderson told Manchester Evening News. 

‘The car is damaged, the bonnet, all down the side, the windscreen. The hole in the bonnet you can put your fist through it.’

He added that one of the chairs they keep on a mini balcony ended up in someone’s garden 15 doors down the street. 

Mr Sanderson said that around 50 per cent of homes had been damaged around his home in the ‘epicentre’ of the tornado.

Another family told how they feared they were going to die as a tornado ripped through their home.

Gareth and Lyndsey Moody had a lucky escape as they scrambled to safety with their three children after the tornado struck while they were in bed.

Lyndsey, an A&E nurse, told the Mirror: ‘We were lucky to get out alive. We could be dead. The house started shaking. I went to the window, it was like it was sucking in and out. The whole ceiling came down.’

Residents described how Storm Gerrit turned streets into ‘warzones’ – with a grandmother revealing a window was blown into her house.

Denise Burrows Devine, 65, and her dog Casper both had a miraculous escape when the entire window unit in her front bedroom was blown clean through and crashed onto the carpet as a supercell thunderstorm hit Stalybridge.

Homeowners were told to attend a town hall for help, and the Met Office revealed there had been a strong rotating updraft and it was ‘likely’ that a tornado had hit.

Greater Manchester Police confirmed officers were called to ‘numerous reports of significant damage’ at about 11.45pm on Wednesday and declared a ‘major incident’. Photographs showed walls blown over, roofs torn apart and windows blown out.

Among those affected was grandmother-of-four Ms Devine and her pet Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Ms Devine told MailOnline: ‘Thankfully I was at my daughter’s when it happened because where the window fell is exactly where Casper normally sleeps.

‘I always put him in his cage downstairs when I go out, but I dread to think what would have happened to both of us if I’d been in bed. 

‘I have extra thick glass because I’m on a main road and it gets noisy, so the window unit weighs a ton and it didn’t smash. 

‘Casper’s an old dog, he’s 12 and not in the best health, so he wouldn’t have stood a chance. It would have crushed him. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Someone must be looking over me.

‘My neighbour rang me and said ‘There’s been a tornado, you’d better come home.’ I thought he was pulling my leg, I couldn’t believe we could get a tornado here in Stalybridge.

‘My daughter drove me straight over and we could barely get down my street, there were trees down everywhere and bits of rubble in the road. I literally just screamed when we pulled up outside my house and I saw the damage.

‘When I saw the state of my bedroom I was totally horrified. I’ve just finished getting the house renovated but my bed is ruined and so is the carpet.

‘The wind and rain just blew straight in. My bedroom’s basically been annihilated. Part of my conservatory roof has been blown off and there are roof tiles everywhere.

‘At least the house itself has stayed in one piece, unlike some of the newer ones around here. It was built in 1888 so they knew how to build them nice and solidly.’

Relatives rallied around to start the clear-up overnight, and by 5am the window was back in place, enabling her to spend the rest of the night in a spare room.

‘The town looked like a warzone this morning,’ the widower said. ‘It’s just a miracle that no-one has been badly hurt. For people to go through having their homes trashed like this just a few days after Christmas is horrendous, I feel so sorry for them.

‘Thankfully my insurers have been great, they’re sending someone round tomorrow to assess the damage.’

Another local resident Andy Turner told MailOnline: ‘At 11.30pm last night, there was – all I can describe – is a hurricane came through. It lasted for about 15 seconds.

‘Cars were parked outside the house. My wife’s car is a write off, my car’s took a bit of the brunt of the tree. It’s just lucky that nobody was hurt. It was pure carnage.’

Dominic Halford, 47, an entertainer, lives on Calico Crescent in Carrbrook, a village to the east of Stalybridge which was one of the worst affected locations.

He told MailOnline: ‘It sounded like a freight train coming through, just this huge rumbling noise. I thought my windows were going to go through – I pulled the duvet on top of myself in case they smashed.

‘Then as quickly as it had swept in, it had gone again. I looked out at the tail end of it and there were wheelie bins rolling around the road as the wind whipped through.

‘All the neighbours came out into the street, lots of people were in their dressing gowns – we couldn’t believe the damage to some of the houses.

‘Everyone was in shock, lots of people’s cars had been smashed up by the debris. Thankfully I’ve just lost some roof tiles, but some people in the street have been really badly affected.’

Just five years ago, 30 homes on the same street and nearby roads were evacuated when massive moorland fires threatened to engulf the neighbourhood.

On that occasion it was saved when the wind changed direction at the last minute.

The area is thought to have been the last built-up area struck by the track of the tornado before it swept into the surrounding hills.

Fellow Stalybridge resident Alan Lake described hearing ‘this almighty roar’, adding: ‘It sounded like a plane was 10ft above the roof. I saw lightning. I looked out of the window, the trees were going every direction you could think of, they were everywhere.’

His house escaped unscathed but a tree blew down and several fence panels went over.

Describing what he heard, John Hathershaw said: ‘There was a howling wind, the windows shook, the house felt like it was shaking, we heard this terrific noise.’

After it had died down, he went outside to find the splintered remains of his garden pergola. ‘The roof is the biggest worry, if look at it from outside you see the roof tiles have lifted,’ he said. ‘In comparison to other people, we were lucky.’

Hayley McCaffer, who lives with her partner in Carrbrook, said that they have been ‘fairly lucky’ compared with some of their neighbours.

Ms McCaffer, 40, said: ‘Some of the neighbours’ houses are an absolute disaster – the roof missing, gable ends gone, cars squished with all the stone that’s come off the houses. Luckily for us, very luckily, we were in the pub last night when it happened.

‘We weren’t here, but also we had parked our car there and looking at the state of our driveway – one of the walls has come down – we were very lucky that it wasn’t parked there because it would have not been in a good state today.’

She said she was alerted to the ‘tornado’ by a phone call from her mother, who lives locally and whose roof was partially ripped off by winds before parts landed on her car.

Emergency services were cordoning off the area when Ms McCaffer and her partner arrived back at their home, and they allowed them to enter and collect some essentials.

‘It was dark so we could see big piles of debris and people’s bits of houses missing,’ she said.

Ms McCaffer and her partner were ‘evacuated’ and remain unsure when they will be able to get back into their home.

‘But we were safe and that was the main thing,’ she added. ‘We’ve got insurance, hopefully that will be covered. And, you know, when things like this happen, there’s lots of people who are worse off than us, so we can’t really complain too much.’

Patricia Watkinson, who also lives in Carrbrook, was away in Norfolk when gusts swept through the village but was told by a neighbour that apart from a ‘dangling’ aerial her home appears undamaged.

The 83-year-old said: ‘I’m glad I wasn’t there. My neighbour, she just rang me, and her shed is gone and the fence is gone. Hopefully, all that is wrong with mine is the aerial dangling.’

Another resident, Alison Atkinson, told BBC Radio Manchester it was unprecedented, saying: ‘There’s trees down everywhere, the roads are closed, trying to get up here.

‘You walk further up the road, there’s another tree that’s gone into a house. There’s two guys up there trying to clear all the trees up now. The lane’s completely blocked off. The pavements are all ripped up. Never seen anything like this, really haven’t.’

Andy Wareham, whose Tesla windscreen was smashed, said he heard ‘extremely loud wind noises’, telling the Manchester Evening News : ‘Things started flying around, roof tiles knocking off. There was about 30 seconds to a minute of chaos and then it calmed down and straight away I was like, ‘it must have been a tornado’.’

And Richard Harrison, whose car window was also destroyed by flying debris, told the newspaper: ‘It was just lucky no one was killed. You can see the strength with that wedged in the back. It was a good job no one was walking down the street.’

Matthew Marsland, who lives opposite houses that were badly damaged, told the M.E.N.: ‘I just heard an extreme noise at my back window. I was stood at the patio doors and there was basically a crazy sounding noise and then vibrations through the glass.’

Dozens of locals were advised to stay inside ‘due to the severity of the damage caused and potential risk to public safety’.

Shocking pictures showed houses with gaping holes in their roofs while dozens of cars were battered by falling bricks, trees and debris.

Residents told of their shock as they woke up to find their homes and cars wrecked in the aftermath of the storm.

Rachael Jones, 44, who lives on Granville Street in Millbrook, said: ‘I was in bed last night, and it just sounded like it was a really bad hailstorm. I could just hear lots of things flying about, I just stayed in bed because I was so scared.

‘This morning I looked outside and it was like a warzone. All the slates off the roofs of my house were off, chimneys down the street have come off, my car’s been written off and all the aerials are down, it’s unbelievable.’

Another resident said: ‘I was woken in the night by some huge bangs. At first I thought a house must have exploded or maybe a plane had come down.

‘When I looked out my window in the morning I couldn’t believe it. All the cars parked down my road were covered in bricks and had smashed windows.

‘The house at the end of the street had had the gable end torn off and you could see right inside their loft. The force of the wind was just unreal.’

On the same street a tree which smashed through a roof caused some residents to be evacuated by the emergency services.

Local Graham Yates, 50, said: ‘There was a tree outside that must be at least 70 or 80 years old but it was literally torn out by its roots.

‘The tornado caught most people by surprise. You heard the word storm but never expect to wake up the next morning to see carnage outside.

‘My neighbour’s garden literally had five people’s wheelie bins in it. They’d just blown right over the wall. I’m amazed no one was hurt or worse. If anyone had been stupid enough to be outside at midnight they’d have been toast.’

Police confirmed ‘various properties’ suffered damage believed to have been caused by a ‘localised tornado’. Officers declared it as a major incident ‘due to the severity of the damage caused and potential risk to public safety’.

Over in Millbrook, several large trees fell into roads and onto cars. Electricity North West and Tameside Council were also involved in the response, and police told ‘displaced’ residents to visit Dukinfield Town Hall for help and advice.

Police said they were working with North West Ambulance Service and Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service, but ‘there have thankfully been no injuries reported’.

Authorities in Greater Manchester were also called to weather incidents amid reports of a possible tornado in Dukinfield and Mossley last night.

Councillor Dave Sweeten from Tameside Council told the Manchester Evening News: ‘We must have been just on the periphery of the route. I’ve lived at the top of the hill for about 50 years.

‘Never heard any winds like it. It woke me up, I couldn’t get back to sleep. Started looking at the council website and internet and all my emails – realised there was a major incident.’

He added: ‘You’ve got New Year to look forward to, a new start. This is not what anybody needs. Scotland has been badly hit, we’ve been badly hit.’

One resident told the newspaper that the noise was ‘like a bomb going off’.

Tameside Council said about 100 homes were evacuated after the ‘mini tornado’ hit areas of Carrbrook and Millbrook.

A spokesperson said: ‘It is believed everyone affected made arrangements to stay with family and friends overnight.

‘Our officers have been out all night and continue to be out today clearing debris, fallen trees and making roads, footpaths and other areas safe.’

The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation said a detailed site investigation would be undertaken before it can confirm the damage was caused by a rare British tornado.

Chief Superintendent Mark Dexter from Greater Manchester Police said: ‘This incident has undoubtedly affected numerous people in the Stalybridge area with many residents displaced from their properties during the night.

‘Our highest priority is keeping people safe which is why we are advising those who have been displaced not to return or entre their properties which have significant damage until they have been assessed by structural engineers.

‘I would also like to urge members of the public to avoid the area where possible and take extra care when travelling in vehicles on the roads in Stalybridge and the surrounding areas, due to debris in the road.

‘This has understandably caused some disruption and, though we are not yet in a position to confirm when the area will return to normal, further updates will be communicated when we have them. I would like to use this opportunity to thank the community for their cooperation and patience.’

And a Met Office spokesman said: ‘Last night a supercell thunderstorm crossed Greater Manchester causing damage.

‘We know from our Dopplar radar that it had a strong rotating updraft. Whilst we don’t yet have surface data to confirm, the presence of these features suggests a tornado at the surface was likely.’

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