Met Office believes cats, who live in Surrey stable yard, would have been lifted by violent swirling gust of wind, not a tornado

A striking new element has been added to the inventory of atrocious weather indicators. Along with the customary floods, uprooted trees, toppling power lines and flying roof tiles, cats were lifted off their feet by the blast of gale-force wind that ripped across counties from Kent to the Midlands on Saturday afternoon, accompanied by lightning, hailstones and torrential rain.

So was it a flying-cat-tornado? "No, probably not," said a Met Office spokesman, almost regretfully. "The conditions were certainly there for a tornado, and I can't say that there definitely wasn't one, but I've seen no positive proof that there was one."

The flying cats were seen by Shirley Blay, who keeps horses at a stable yard in Chobham, Surrey. "We've got four feral cats in the yard and they were being lifted off the ground – about 6ft off the ground – they just went round like a big paper bag," she told the BBC. None of the cats were injured, but her granddaughter escaped a shed just before it was torn apart by the wind. Blay said: "It was a mini tornado, I can't describe it as anything less."

The Met Office thought it likely the cats were lifted by a violent swirling gust, rather than a tornado.

Winds of 75mph were recorded at Lydd, Kent, and there were many reports of the wind speed suddenly changing from calm to gale force.

The spokesman said conditions were right, with strong gusts and wind shear – sudden changes in wind speed and direction – that could generate an upward swirling flow of air, but that would have to lead to a spinning funnel of cloud sucked down to touch the ground to count as a tornado.

"None of our spotters reported definitely seeing a tornado and I haven't seen any photographs, so while there could have been a tornado, and we can't prove there wasn't, we believe it was just a sudden onset of very strong squally wind. People coming out of their homes, though, could well have believed that they were witnessing the eye of a tornado."

Damage to power lines resulted in loss of supply to 13,000 customers in Kent, Sussex and Surrey on Saturday, a number reduced to about 1,100 by Sunday lunchtime after overnight work by UK Power Networks.

Residents in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, took refuge in a church hall when their street was closed for structural engineers to carry out safety checks after roof tiles and bricks were dislodged, leaving several roofs extensively damaged.

Fire and breakdown services answered hundreds of calls. Reports of damage included a stained-glass window cracked when a church in West Bromwich was struck by lightning, and curtains in a ground-floor lounge set on fire by another lightning bolt in Stirchley, Birmingham – and this reporter's chimney pot toppled in west London.

There is more bad weather to come, with yet more flood alerts in the south-west, and warnings of snow across many parts of Scotland.