A tornado is possible, the Met Office warned this afternoon (Wednesday 21 May), as heavy showers fell amid passing thunderstorms.

The official forecaster said that areas around Brighton and Hove had seen the worst of the rain so far, with about a third of an inch or 8mm recorded in Plumpton.

Met Office meteorologist Dean Hall said “We are seeing some heavy showers and thunderstorms breaking out across parts of the West Midlands, down towards south east England and central southern England.

“We are seeing a few lightning returns as well, lightning flashes in some of the data.

“Some of those showers have been producing some small hail as well and probably within the vicinity of those heavy showers, some gusty winds – gusting 30mph in one or two places.”

Mr Hall said: “When thunderstorms develop, depending on the nature of the storm, if you’ve got the right ingredients there to produce a tornado they will form – same with funnel clouds as well.

“With the nature of these thunderstorms, if a tornado was to be put down in a populated area then it would get recognised, obviously, because it may cause some damage.

“You can get some strong winds with tornadoes, quite damaging.”

But no tornadoes have been reported so far and, Mr Hall said, if any were to develop, it would be rare for them to occur in towns and cities and it was unlikely that they would be big.

The heavy rainfall comes as the Environment Agency warned that this year had had the driest start for more than 170 years.

The agency previously warned of the risk of drought this summer without sustained rainfall, with millions of households told that they may face restrictions on water use in the coming months.

As of Friday (16 May), 80.6mm of rain had been recorded in Britian this spring, nearly 20mm less than the record low for the full season of 100.7mm set in 1852.

The outlook is for a couple of dry days tomorrow and on Friday, with some showers over the bank holiday weekend and the wind picking up, particularly on Sunday.