There goes the summer: Hundreds see bizarre weather phenomenon over Somerset

This is the moment Britain's extreme 'summer' weather took a terrifying twist.

Funnel clouds, twisters and even tornados - where the formation touches the ground -  swept through the country from the south.

Hundreds of residents spotted this particular formation as it moved up the Severn Estuary and headed inland at Clevedon, Somerset, on Wednesday.

Tom Turner was settling down to cup of tea in his kitchen when, despite being daylight, it got very dark.

Office worker Tom, 29, said: "I was just getting ready to make some tea, so I was looking and looked out of the window and saw a vapour trail coming down from a cloud.

"I thought it wasn't right, and ran outside - it was a proper tornado. I watched it for about 20 minutes and it then moved off in the direction of Portishead.

"It was the first one I have ever seen and I was every excited. I wasn't scared, because it didn't look dangerous. It looked interesting.

"One of my mates said they saw a double rainbow with two twisters in the middle."

Barmaid Sarah Fortune saw the twister and a double rainbow in the sky at the same time.

Sarah, 27, said: "My boys noticed it before me and came running into the house. My youngest, Harvey, was terrified. The poor thing. He's only five.

"We had to do some research on the internet, and think it's probably a funnel cloud, which is harmless. I didn't know what to think really - I've never seen anything like it."

The bizarre weather phenomenon was caused by unstable air quickly rotating in thundery clouds which then tips towards the ground, causing the recognisable shape.

A Met Office spokesman said: "It is very difficult to observe tornadoes. They can be quite isolated but there were several reports of tornadoes, so we had a day for it.

"What we had was some very heavy and thundery showers pushed east through the day.

"In those kind of very heavy showers you can get weak tornadoes forming, which we saw yesterday. We had reports of one in Leamington, and one in Clevedon."

Funnel clouds are fairly common rotating formations that come out of the bottom of a cloud, but in rare circumstances, they touch the ground and are then classified as tornadoes.

If it touches water it becomes a water spout.

Britain sees  a couple of hundred funnel clouds annually, and around 35 weak tornadoes, which rarely cause more damage than uprooting a tree.

The Met Office spokesman added: "Actually, if you take the surface area of the UK and compare that to other parts of the world you see more tornadoes in the UK per surface area than you do in any other part of the world.

"It would be mischievous to say that we are the 'Tornado Capital of the World,' because the tornadoes we see here are at best 50 metres across - the kind of tornados you're getting in the States can be one kilometre across and wipe out whole towns."