Lucky escape as twister misses Angmering

Brian Bastable, 31, from Portland Road, was standing outside the Artists In Stone workshop in Littlehampton Road on Monday afternoon when he saw a dark cloud over the nearby Roundstone pick-your-own farm.

"This big cloud structure was rotating. This thing came down out of the cloud like two fingers twisting round each other.

"It must have been 50 feet in diameter. It didn't touch the ground but it was gently rotating. It stayed like that for a while and didn't move too much, then after a while it was sucked back up into the cloud and drifted north towards Highdown.

"It all just went really still. There wasn't much movement anywhere apart from this thing.

"It's a pretty good job it didn't touch down or there would have been cars everywhere."

Despite devastating images of the destruction caused by last Thursday's tornado in Birmingham being seen across the country, Mr Bastable insisted he was never worried by what he was watching.

"I was more excited than anything because I've never seen a tornado. I've only seen them on programmes like Stormchasers on the Discovery Channel. It's not like a little dust-devil dusting across the floor."

A Met Office spokesman confirmed several sights of "funnel clouds" had been reported in the area, although no damage of any kind had been mentioned.

He said: "It's unlikely we can get more out of it unless we get more reports of damage, and it appears it touched down in a rural area. It was quite unstable air, with heavy showers bordering on thunderstorms."