Tornado 'blew over my 60ft tree like a matchstick'

A woman has described how her 60ft pine tree "blew over like a matchstick" when a tornado struck two villages last year.

Winds of up to 160mph swept through Millbrook and Carrbrook in Stalybridge, Greater Manchester, on the evening of 27 December 2023.

Kate Booth has lived in a farmhouse above Millbrook since she was a little girl.

"I lost my beautiful Monterery pine, which I'd planted when I was eight, and it's taken until September to get it cut away, " she said.

When the tornado struck, Ms Booth said she had "woken up in the middle of the night and the window was shaking, then there was a hailstorm".

The next morning, there was debris strewn across her garden.

"It's part of the price you pay for living up here. You've got to accept it," she said.

David Green, 61, who lives in a 17th century stone house above the village of Millbrook, said: "The hailstones were like marbles hitting the windows.

"The lane was blocked with fallen trees and it took us the best part of two days to clear them.

"We then needed a chipper to get rid of the branches".

"A 45ft oak tree blew on to the house and we finally got rid of the trunk in March," he added.

Scores of houses in the villages of Millbrook and Carrbrook have had their roofs repaired and there are dozens of tree stumps along Huddersfield Road.

A year later, on the hillsides above Stalybridge Country Park, there are still dozens of fallen trees and the damage to many farm buildings has not been repaired.

Brian Bardsley, 79, remembers a "tremendous crash" outside his home in Millbrook.

"The crash was the tree that landed on the roof of next door's house," he said.

"There was also damage to my house, so I decided to have it re-roofed".

He said he still got "very nervous" during high winds, even 12 months on.

The Tornado and Storm Research Organisation is investigating the extreme weather event in Millbrook and Carrbrook.

It rates it as the strongest tornado to have hit the UK mainland in recent times.