A freak tornado carved a swath through East Anglia, felling trees, tossing garden furniture over hedges and blowing people off their feet.

Villagers in Suffolk yesterday were surveying the damage left by the twister, which struck at 2.30pm on Monday. Residents of Pettistree saw electricity lines ripped out, windows smashed and chimneys knocked down. Maureen Stollery, 67, said: “Everything was going round and round. It spun the top of a 35ft tree in our garden until it was ripped off. It was pulled clean off and the top spun round in the air.”

The village of Blaxhall, ten miles to the northeast, was next in the tornado's path. Clare Borrett, 35, said: “All of a sudden this really dark cloud came from nowhere and my hat blew off. I tried to run after it - but I could not stop running because of the wind and it blew me over. I managed to get up and saw sparks flying from power lines. Then I stumbled 30 yards to my house and it hit me on the ground again. I had to crawl up a verge and throw myself in a hedge.”

The coastal town of Leiston felt the same force. It damaged the roof at Leiston High School, ripping off a skylight and lifting bins off the ground, Ian Flintoff, the head teacher, said.

Paul Knightley, of Torro, which monitors severe weather, said: “It was almost certainly a tornado. There aren't any other phenomena that would have left such a long, narrow path of damage.” The Met Office confirmed that fronts over southeast England had created the conditions for a tornado.

Yesterday Colin Dolby, 47, a trawler skipper, was missing after his 40ft boat disappeared from radar screens in gales in the Thames Estuary, and a 44-year-old Spanish fisherman died after he was lashed by a snapped cable in 50mph winds off the Scilly Islands.

On Monday a police helicopter spotted the car of Molly Leonard, 91, where she had spent the night on the North Yorkshire moors after pulling over in atrocious weather.