A small tornado recently passed through the town of Littlehampton on England’s south coast. Strong winds smashed windows, moved cars and left one person injured.
You might associate tornadoes with the plains of the central US, but they’re surprisingly common in the UK too – albeit smaller and weaker. In fact, my former PhD student Kelsey Mulder found that the UK has about 2.3 tornadoes per year per 10,000 square kilometres. That’s a higher density than the US, which as a whole has just 1.3 per 10,000 square km.
The numbers are higher for American states in “Tornado Alley” such as Oklahoma (3.6) or Kansas (11.2). Nonetheless, a random location in the UK is more likely to experience a tornado than a random location in the US.
