The east London contingent are, as far as I know, all fine.. I watched the storm from my office window in north central London. where it was bright and sunny on one side of the room and black as pitch the other side. We had a spectacular view of the lightening, but the wind damage was beyond our horizons. The hail was like having someone fire a bag of gravel at your windows, it was coming in horizontally and the visibility at one point got down to just about the other side of the street. We're about 1/2 mile from Kings Cross Station, and that vanished completely! Watching the windows flexing like something out of 'Carrie' was a little nerve racking, but we survived.

Now I know you Yanks are all going 'call that a tornado? That weren't nothing but a lil'ole dust devil', but here in the Old Country, we're not used to such things. We don't have such hugely vast open spaces where a dust devil can spread out and get in touch with its inner chaos so that it becomes the screaming, roaring lump of weather you're used to. When we get dust devils we milk 'em for all they're worth!

LTS