Violent winds that caused around £100,000 worth of damage to a Welsh farm and lifted lambs into the air have been confirmed as a tornado.
The tornado uprooted dozens of trees and ripped off part of the roof at Gogarth Hall Farm in Pennal, near Machynlleth in North Wales, on Wednesday.
Experts at the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO) investigated the site and believe the damage was caused by a T3 tornado.
It reached speeds between 93mph and 114mph, investigator John Mason said.
T3 is classed as a strong tornado, with the strongest, T10, categorised as a super tornado with wind speeds of up to 299mph and the power to pull entire homes from their foundations, according to the International Tornado Intensity Scale.
“The tornado was confirmed as there was plenty of evidence of objects being airborne and spinning around the circulation before falling to the ground,” Mr Mason said.
The powerful gusts carried a ewe out of a shed and picked up her lambs.
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The lambs survived but sadly the ewe is “gone”, said farm owner Deilwen Breese.
Ms Breese was away from home when the tornado struck and did not realise the scale of the damage until she returned.
“I thought it was just that part of the roof had gone,” she said.
“But oh my god, when I came home I could not believe it. The devastation, it was heartbreaking,” she said.
“I am still in shock, really. Trees had been lifted from their roots. If they hadn’t been lifted they had just been tarnished.
“We have lost hundreds of trees.”
Ms Breese believes the tornado has inflicted around £100,000 damage to the roof of the farm.
A team of kind-hearted local volunteers have now been enlisted to help with the clean-up.
But Ms Breese fears the farm will never be the same.
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She added: “It’s going to take months, it will never get back, not in my lifetime. It will never come back to what it was.”
Up to 35 tornados are reported in the UK and Ireland in an average year, according to TORRO.
A tornado ripped through London leaving cars and homes damaged in June last year.
A “mini-tornado” left a trail of destruction on a housing estate in Cheshire in October.
