28/10/2013 Inside Out South

Hello from Langstone Harbour in Portsmouth. Your stories from where

we left. Here's what's coming up tonight. Tornadoes and storms across

southern England, the expect same Warwick stream weather could be on

the way. This was extremely terrifying. My wife was absolutely

frightened to death. And predictions for winter, was this morning's storm

just the start of it. Boxing Day is notorious for deal force wins. Plus

a special report on President John F Kennedy's visit to Sussex at a

crucial moment in world history. Two or three months later, he is

assassinated. It is his last visit to Britain. This is inside out for

the South of England. It's been a Monday most will want to

forget, hundreds of trees were brought down by storm force winds

overnight. A massive clean`up operation got underway first thing.

Was last night's storm was perhaps not as bad as many people had

feared, if you come out in the morning and find your car looking

like this it is a bad old start to the week. In Christchurch one tree

landed on three cars owned by the same family. Big gust of wind, my

daughter started screaming saying a tree had come down. I looked out the

window and there it is. Property was damaged as trees fell. When it

rotated, the roots have lifted the entire shed. The cost is expected to

run into millions of pounds, 1.80 2000 `` 122 million homes without

power. I have now had to take annual leave. It is my first day of my new

job today, not a very good start. This disruption follows an unsettled

week, which even sought a Tornado crashing through the streets of

Hayling Island. Around 100 homes have been damaged

by a tornado. There has been damaged to tiles from rooftops. We were just

woken up by this noise and I thought the windows were about to be sucked

out of the house. There was foolish, it felt like the roof lifting. My

bedroom door burst open. My house shook, I felt that there was an

earthquake. The wind had picked the caravan up and thrown it into a

tree. As I looked out, there was just a dark tree blown out of the

sky. This almighty tree was landed on my parents's car. I have seen it

on the television and in America, you do not think what it's like,

this was completely terrifying. My wife was absolutely frightened to

death. The tornado struck just over a week

ago. After last night's storms, it has left some worried about the

future. Possibly more of this to come. The whole world has changed.

After it passed" and is on the front garden was full of roof tiles. The

rear window of my car had been sucked out. It was very surreal.

What Anna did not know was that her husband had already seen the tornado

forming as he was out windsurfing. I phoned my husband on the beach to

check that he was not already on the water, and he said, it was

brilliant. I said, yes, it has just hit the house. Luckily he was on the

beach with his friends and they were laughing and joking about it. When I

said it was to have gone down the road, he was like, really? He came

back, so the damage and realised that I was not messing about and he

needed to come home. Whilst a twister has left some residents

surprised, tornadoes on the south coast are more common than you might

think. We have more tornadoes per square metre in this part of the

country than anywhere else in the world. We have some real warmth and

energy still in the seas and the cold air gives us the instability

that causes the tornadoes to develop. When they stray click here

run Hayling Island the costs runs into hundreds of thousands of homes.

`` when they strike like your own Hayling Island. We have even had a

kidney picked up and thrown into the neighbours's pond. `` a canoe picked

up. How lucky that this happened early on Sunday morning when people

were not out and about because this stuff flying around could do some

serious damage. This man witnessed the twister first`hand. You saw it?

I saw it from the bedroom window at the back. My wife had gone to make a

cup of tea. I heard this noise that sounded like an army tank going

along the road. I got up and looked out the window. As I whipped out I

could see this swirl going round. To me it looked like a gazebo flying

around in the sky. And then all of a sudden it was just gone. You

actually saw the tornado. Twisting round like that, yes. It came

straight across, hit this garage, hit the roof there. Went on to the

roof there that has been repaired. It took one side of the flats's

roof. It has gone around the property. And even this. Everyone is

amazed that this is still standing. You can follow the path of the

tornado just by looking at the damage. It is clear that it came

over here and then down this road. You can see from all the roof tiles

the damage we are tiles have been lifted off by the force of the wind.

And then it carried on its course. This pure householder here has

suffered quite a bit of damage in the garden `` poor householder. All

these pillars have been taken out. That has been ruined. The metal has

been penned back on the garage. Then it went on across the, taking out

more roof tiles and onto the sailing club, which is where we are going to

go next. This was the scene that greeted boat

owners as they arrived at the sailing club. But he is piled high,

masts twisted and snapped and damage estimated at more than ?100,000. The

exact moment the Time Lord will `` that tornado struck was captured on

CCTV. We came down to have a look and we found bolt hole over the

place with bits missing and carnage, basically. `` boats all

over the place. There were very few people about, so there was no actual

injury, which is tremendous. Not so tremendous as the damage done to

people's prized sailing dinghies. Many will be written off. This is a

sad old site. It was originally parked just over here beside this

turquoise one. It has gone 40 feet, snapped the massed into. It has

obviously had something on the way. It looks as if something has

skewered it. It has smashed a hole through the deck and come back out

through the bottom of the hole. The whole thing was attached to its

trailers well. It has picked the whole trailer up and then the

trailer as well. Wherever there are no massed `` masts is the root of

the tornado. It has gone that way and then out to sea.

These farmers are standing where 12 hours before a hut had housed the

poultry. Tornadoes in the south have been making headlines for decades.

Of the 700 chickens, barely 100 survived. Earlier this year, a

twister of a milder variety was caught on camera in Hampshire.

Previously on the Isle of Wight this quartet 's was filmed on a popular

picnic spot. And how about this, a 2000 feet high water spout, again

seen off the Isle of Wight. When it comes to wild weather, the

residents of Sophie down the coast from Hayling, know a thing or two.

They have lived through tornadoes. The last one in 1998. In a few

violent moments, hundreds of lives were turned upside down. The 1998

storm did ?10 million worth of damage. Ten years earlier, had

another one. So does this mean its hotspot and get more? We look like

we're going to see more extreme conditions. The atmosphere can hold

more moisture. It has more energy out there, so we could see more

tornadoes in the future. We will have to batten down the hatches in

the South? If you like going out looking for these things, they may

happen on a more frequent basis, so you can go out and take photographs

and see if you can spot one yourself. And that's exactly what

Tony does for a research organisation. A group affiliated to

Brookes University. I always had a curious mind and I love the weather

extremes. And I like to research. Just two days after the Hayling

Island tornado there was what looks like another one just along the

coast in West Sussex. It would appear from the damage spread around

that we have had a very narrow spout, shall just there. It has

lifted a small roof and tossed it properly 100 yards in that

direction. I would envisage wind speeds of between 55 and 73 mph. It

is actually quite, quite weak, as far as tornadoes are concerned, but

it was a very straight line, very narrow and isolated. It was a water

spout and then a tornado. It came ashore from the sea and then became

a tornado. It's not the first time Tony has been to that exact spot. I

was here in 1999 and I have a damaged track which is a few hundred

yards up the road and it runs in line with this track and it's

incredible we're standing here, years later, doing a similar

investigation. This area is prone to tornadoes and watersports especially

in October, November, December, and there are some research coming on

with regards to the Isle of Wight having a spinning effect which is

translating down to small tornadoes. And sometimes large

tornadoes, which then go to mainland. Can we predict when

certain weather events might happen? Conventional forecasts like

to play it safe but there are other ways. See that little horses tell?

That's a change in the weather. Dave is happy to give long`range weather

forecasts. He is a philologist, which means he reads the weather do

according to nature. I look at what nature tells me and it's up to me

then to interpret what nature is telling me. Over the years, he's

tested out thousands of old sayings and now lives by the ones which

seemed to work whilst throwing out those which don't. There are

millions of acorns this year. There are saying is that if the leaves are

still on the oak tree by leaf fall, the end of this month, a hard

winter. The reason for the leaves being on the trees is very simple.

They provide cover, protection for the birds. He claims he's got a 90%

success rate for his forecasts. For the winter birds, food. So this

means the winter birds... Winter is going to be long and hard because

it's got to provide. The more acorns, berries and leaves, the

tougher the winter we have got? Yes, it doesn't look a lot to you but

this could be Christmas dinner. A lot of meteorologists won't tell us

whether it's going to be a white Christmas. But you will. They don't

do seasonal forecasts any more because they can't afford to be

wrong because they get the finger pointed at them, but it doesn't

affect me. If I'm wrong, I will put my hands up, but I'm not often

wrong, so I can say, from Boxing Day) up to Palm Sunday, it's going

to be cold. Snow and ice. It's going to cause problems for a lot of

people. No snow on Christmas Day but both Dave and professional

forecasters alike seem to agree we could be in for a very cold winter

in the New Year. It's far too far in the future to have the details to

know whether a particular day is going to have a certain kind of

weather, but there is a signal we could get blocking systems which

Britain the cold bitter winters that we have seen lately. When we filmed

and lastly, did Dave forecast this morning's bad weather? 28th, stormy

day. It will always be a stormy day and at a Met Office stormy period

any case, so storms on Monday. If you have got any wild weather

stories, I would love to hear all about them. Next tonight, it's 50

years since President John F Kennedy was assassinated. But did you know

it's all so 50 years since JFK visited Sussex? Glen Campbell has

been even exclusive access to the archives of the Sussex Police

authority which show a very historic visit to the south. Thousands of us

past it every day, and nowhere is it even exists. Let alone what it

commemorates. For 50 years, this white stone plaque is marked the

weekend President John F Kennedy visited the Sussex village of Forest

Road. The Sussex Summit is almost like an Indian summer. She is John F

Kennedy, unknown to him, of course, is last visit to Britain, to Europe.

He is going to be assassinated a few months later. I was the one person

that have that key to the room that had the hot line to the President

in. It crossed my mind to go in and say, . Hi there.

COMMENTATOR: He was visiting his sister in Derbyshire. A few things

are not scheduled on this trip. Harold Macmillan only has 20 minutes

of the President's time and a lot to talk about. Nuclear tests and the

NATO themes are on the list. June 1963, the world was a

precarious place. The height of the Cold War. The USA and Soviet Union

facing one another in a nuclear arms race and was in this atmosphere,

president John F Kennedy flew into Gatwick for talks with Harold

Macmillan at his country estate, Birchgrove, just outside East

Grinstead in Sussex. The main achievement, a test ban treaty. One

was older and one was younger. One had enjoyed the playboy life, and

the other was very demure. But they understood each other faced huge

problems. The big question, when agreement leave `` lead to agreement

in Moscow? The President's and visit came a few days after perhaps the

most famous speech of his political career. His historic address to

hundreds of thousands in Berlin. Today, in the world of freedom,

hundreds of thousands in Berlin. This is a major period of his life

because he is given a speech many people remember as one of the

significant events of the Cold War which defined the Soviet Union. He

goes to Ireland, to visit his family, and then comes to see his

old friend, Harold Macmillan. Fast forward 50 years and the starting

point for our story is here at the Sussex County records office. With

the help of Brighton historian Paul Eldred, we found the original police

files detailing the president 's visit to Sussex in the summer of

1963. Half a century later, they're still information that we are not

allowed to see. Sensitivities, still run high, I suppose. There were

three jets before they started. Two American helicopters, two

presidential cars, 100 members of the press, Brighton's two largest

hotels were completely blocked out. Every hotel within Sussex seem to

have been booked up. It was absolutely enormous. Two helicopters

for the President and these went straight to Birchgrove and landed

within the estate. As the helicopters were used to connect to

Brighton and they landed on the health and Brunswick lawn.

Birchgrove, the house, really acted as a stage for a play with all the

comings and goings of the international summit. Using the

files as our starting point, we have decided to track down some of the

eyewitnesses present during JFK's last visit to Britain. This is

interesting, Sunday morning, 8:15am, President Kennedy left

Birchgrove for Forest Row, when he went to church. News he was

attending Mass in a tiny Sussex village wrought out hundreds of

local onlookers. It's an amazing moment for the blizzard, the only

opportunity the general public really had to seek Kennedy close`up.

He came out in his bubble top car, and drove two miles into the village

to go to Mass. The vehicle they used was the same vehicle that was used

later Kennedy was assassinated in in Dallas, so it was the same scene

which became a part of history a few months later. Among the hundreds of

local people gathered waiting to see the President, Lillian Shawcross and

Doreen Mahoney. Both still living Forest Road today. You could see the

rooms of the houses and because we wanted a better view, my mother and

I stood on the side of the Bath and we could see right across. You saw

the President arrived? With security men? Yes, and after the service,

when they came out, we still got a very good of you right across.

Exciting, really, because we never had anybody that big. He was a

lovely man, a lovely man, everybody loved him, really.

Two miles away from the hustle and bustle of the presidential visit,

police constable Peter Etheridge was patrolling East Grinstead high

Street. He had been left out of the Sussex Police operation to protect

JFK and was quietly a bit annoyed. But his luck was about to change.

Everyone else seemed to be rushing about doing things and I felt just

neglected, if you like. And I was on patrol in East Grinstead high

Street, and Ken Hutchinson, the detective sergeant, drove up

alongside me and said, quick, jump in. He took me home, and I got my

jacket, I had no idea what it was for. He drove me down to Birchgrove,

where the Prime Minister Macmillan lived and all these people, all of

them American, with lovely uniforms on, lots of gold braiding, and he

said, this is Detective Sergeant, elevating my right, of course,

Etheridge, and, would you believe it, they all shook my hand? Please

to meet you, sir. We're off to lunch. Here is the key to the room

with the hotline in. They gave me the key. And they were gone. And I

was left in the Prime Minister 's house all alone. Now retired and

living in Chichester, his brief stint in charge of security remains

one of his career highs. I wondered all around Harold Macmillan's

house, really. I could hear voices in the distance. That might have

been in the kitchens. I can't remember now how I knew it was

JFK's bedroom, or to be his bedroom, but it must have had his room on the

door but I know I sat on the bed and bounced up and down. I didn't pride,

but I've got to do something with the time I was there. I looked in

Macmillan's medicine cabinet and he seemed to suffer with what I know

suffer from. And I suppose, over an hour, I suppose, I heard voices and

went downstairs and my moment of glory was over. The Earl of

Stockton, Harold Macmillan's grandson, lifted Birchgrove and

witnessed all the comings and goings of the Sussex summit of 1963. In the

run`up to it, there was talk that they should go to Chequers. And the

Queen even suggested Windsor Castle. And I think it was my

grandmother who said, no, Harold, he's coming to our home. You have

got to remember that these times, politicians to meet as they do now

in summit G20, they have to steal time from other things, because

there were no formal summit that they're going to be at the mess they

create events themselves, and the fact it in the house of Harold

Macmillan, shows it was a personal visit. The Sussex summit took place

in the crucial months leading up to the signing of a nuclear test ban

treaty which will ultimately bring an end to very real fears of nuclear

war between the United States and the Soviet Union. There was a degree

of almost father`son relationship between the two of them. That was

reinforced by the Cuban missile crisis. My grandfather was speaking

to them three or four times a day. Mr McMillan was home from Russia and

the Cold War had undoubtedly thought as a result of his enterprising

visit. Jack had no exposure and found the Russian prime minister

very difficult to deal with. My grandfather said, you have got to

stand up to him because you must be careful not to provide him with an

excuse to do something stupid. In an all too short flurry of Secret

Service activity and British hospitality, President John F

Kennedy left Sussex 24 hours later. It was to be his last visit to

Europe. In November that year, he was assassinated. He shook hands

with us. And he said, I guess I'll be seeing you in Washington soon.

And I think almost his last words to Harold work, we must do this again

and soon. And he got into the helicopter. It dipped slightly as

they flew out. When told of Kennedy's death, Harold Macmillan,

who had just resigned, due to ill`health, make this entry his

diary. "Alas, I was never to see my friend again. Be for those leaves

had turned and fallen, he was snatched by an assassin's bullet."

Glen Campbell with that report. Right, that's it for now and indeed

for the series, but we are back early in the New Year but keep your

e`mails coming in. We can't do it without you. Talking about females,

let's have a look at what you have been saying. Lots of reaction about

our story about the dog attack in Dorset. The woman should have all

heard dogs taken away. It's obvious she's not strong enough to control

this type of dog. If you have got a story we should be

investigating for the next series, e`mail me.

Hello, I'm Riz Lateef with your 90-second update. Four people are

dead after the worst UK storm for years. Hurricane-force conditions

left almost half a million homes without power. In some areas wind

speeds reached up to 99 miles-per-hour. The weather caused

travel chaos for many. Rail and road services were disrupted because of

fallen trees, while over a hundred flights had to be cancelled at

Heathrow. Get the latest updates on BBC Local Radio.

On trial over the phone-hacking affair.