Driver narrowly escapes huge oak tree from Storm Christoph crashing onto car

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A lucky motorist had a terrifying near-miss this morning when high winds brought down a huge oak tree – crushing the front half of his car.

Storm Christoph is lashing the UK with high winds and torrential rain with two months' worth of rain expected to fall in just a few days.

And the driver of a blue Fiat 500 got an early taste of the mayhem as he drove along Ixworth Road in Thurston, Suffolk at 6.30am on Wednesday.

Miraculously, the driver was unharmed, despite his car being almost buried beneath the huge tree’s spreading branches.

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  UK weather: Brits braced for battering from 'danger to life' Storm Christoph

Officers from the Norfolk and Suffolk Roads and Armed Policing Team (NSRAPT) rushed to the scene, and shared shocking photos of the incident on their Twitter account.

A spokesperson for NSRAPT wrote: "First casualty of the bad weather… this convertible Fiat 500 had an oak tree fall on top of him as he was driving along.

"Amazingly no injuries. Ixworth Road, Thurston is currently closed in both directions.

"Be careful out on the roads! Drive to the conditions."

Severe weather warnings are in force across the country, and the wet conditions could bring significant flooding, high winds and – in some areas – snowfall until at least Thursday.

Several areas have been placed on high alert.

The Met Office’s Simon Partridge told the Mirror: "It's not a traditional sort of storm, it's going to be windy but it's not based on the wind strength at all, it's really down to the disruption that's being caused by rain.

"There are already parts of Cumbria that have already seen over 80mm of rain since midnight on Tuesday and there's a large number of places that have seen 50mm, and we are going to see further rain over the next 24 to 36 hours."

He added that the severe storm made it likely that some areas could see double the average amount of monthly rainfall over a few days.

He said: "Those areas that have seen between 50mm and 70mm already, the warning is out until midday on Thursday, so an extremely long period, but by then we could see up to 150mm to possibly 200mm of rainfall.

"The Midlands for example, their average rainfall total for the whole month is 73mm, so they could easily get double that in the course of two, two and a half days."

• Met Office
• UK Weather

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