How Saturday night's tornado took just 15 minutes to rip through parts of Northamptonshire

Local weather experts tracking the trail of Saturday night's tornado reckon it took just 15 minutes to whizz through parts of Northampton and surrounding villages.

The twister started life near Weedon and then crossed the M1 before moving over the Bramptons and causing damage on a building site at Buckton Fields.

Final reports of its path were from Moulton, where locals woke up on Sunday morning to find their allotments had been wrecked.

Chronicle & Echo weather-watcher Jamie from @NNWeather said: "People sent me tweets and private messages which helped put together a path of the tornado. Reports such as these are invaluable when events like this happen."

"Their reports suggested the tornado formed out near Weedon then moved eastwards, passing near to the Bramptons before causing some damage on the Buckton Fields building site.

"It carried on past Boughton and the last reports are from Moulton. It seems to have lasted for approximately 15 minutes in total."

The twister is believed to have been first sighted at around 8pm and the Chronicle & Echo broke news of what was then still thought to be a funnel cloud at 8.43pm.

News of the tornado travelled around the world with tweets being picked up from Iraq, Brazil, Germany and France.

Saturday's twister also tracked close to the path of one which landed in Duston nearly five years ago and caught the attention of former Duston Upper School student, Good Morning Britain weather presenter Laura Tobin,

According to the Met Office, around 30 tornadoes a year are reported in the UK — typically small and short-lived.

Britain's strongest ever tornado, which battered Portsmouth in December 1810. had a top speed of around 230mph. Mopre recently, a 145mph twister uprooted around 1,000 trees when it hit Birmingham in 2005.