In the span of 5 hours and 26 minutes during the late morning and early afternoon of 23 November 1981, 104 confirmed tornadoes touched down across Wales and central, northern and eastern England.
On 22 November 1981, a rapidly deepening low-pressure extratropical cyclone was centred just off the northern coast of Scotland.
[4] During the morning of 23 November, a cold front attached to the southern edge of the low-pressure area began to cross the United Kingdom from west to east.
Fuelled by this temperature gradient and warm subtropical air to the south, a number of supercell thunderstorms became embedded within the southern edge of the cold front and its pre-frontal rain bands, spawning the first tornadoes over Wales around 10:30 GMT.
Several days after the tornado outbreak, the high-pressure anticyclone to the south of the British Isles broke down, allowing colder arctic air to move in from the north, resulting in the start of a record-breaking cold wave.