An area between London and Reading in Berkshire is the most likely part of Britain to be hit by a tornado, according to a team from the University of Manchester. Using witness reports of UK twisters over a 32-year period, the scientists found the area most likely to be struck was west and south-west of London, which had a “6% chance per year of a tornado occurring within 10km of a given location”. But they also described this as a “one in 17-year event”.

The UK experiences on average 34 tornadoes a year, the most per area of land mass in the world, the scientists said. The strongest seen were categorised as F2 on the Fujita scale used to assess their power, with winds of up to 157mph, compared with the F5 storms seen in the US, where winds can exceed 300mph.

Kelsey Mulder, of the university’s school of earth, atmospheric and environmental sciences, and the report’s lead author, said: “F2 tornadoes are still quite strong and are perfectly capable of causing damage and injury. For example, there was the twister that hit Birmingham in 2005 that caused 19 injuries and £40m of damage. Because tornadoes are capable of causing such damage, it is important that we have some kind of idea where they are most likely to hit.”

The Birmingham twister swept through the Sparkbrook, Balsall Heath, Moseley and Kings Heath areas at 130mph, uprooting more than 1,000 trees and causing extensive damage to homes and businesses.

The scientists’ paper, for the June edition of Monthly Weather Review, analysed land-based tornado data from 1980 to 2012. The second most likely area to be affected by tornadoes was an area from Bristol through Birmingham to Manchester (5%), a strip starting north-east of London and running to Ipswich (4%), and the south Wales coast around Swansea (3%). Ninety-five per cent of the storms were categorised as F0 or F1 tornadoes, meaning wind speeds of up to 112mph. The peak season for tornadoes was May to October, with 78% affecting England.

Mulder added: “It seems that most tornadoes in the UK are created along long, narrow storms that form along cold fronts, whereas most tornadoes in the United States are created by isolated storms, which are more similar to the beautiful supercells you see in the movie Twister.

“Even in the United States, tornadoes formed along cold fronts tend to be weaker than those formed from supercells. That could be one reason why tornadoes in the UK are much weaker. But the process for how tornadoes form along cold fronts is not yet very well understood.”