Are there tornadoes in the UK? or Europe in general?

Yes there are some occasionally, they are very small and not usually reported as they do not tend to create much damage.

But if we wait long enough strong tornado's will occur such as the one in Birmingham in 2005, just as you throw two dice repeatedly you will eventually get two 6's. :)

The USA gets more tornadoes than anyone else but the country with the most per unit area is the UK.

Most tornadoes, even in the USA are weak - F0 or F1. If the USA gets 1000 tornadoes a year and an F5 tornado every five years, that's one F5 tornado per 5000 tornadoes. If the UK gets 40 tornadoes a year, if the storms were similar to those in the USA, it could expect an F5 tornado once every 125 years. The probability is that with the latitude of the UK, it will never get an F5 tornado.

Tornadoes occur a lot more than you may think in the UK, which receives an average of 40 tornadoes per year.

However, these tornadoes are generally very weak and usually cause no damage with many of them not being noticed since the majority will occur in rural areas and will be very short lived. In the UK almost all tornadoes which occur are not produced in supercell thunderstorms since these storms are rare in the UK. The USA receives many more tornadoes which are much more severe and many are produced in supercell thunderstorms which are much more common in North America due to the convergence of different air masses over the large land mass.

Here is a quote from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/severeweather/...

"In terms of absolute tornado counts, the United States leads the list, with an average of over 1,000 tornadoes recorded each year. A distant second is Canada, with around 100 per year. Other locations that experience frequent tornado occurrences include northern Europe, western Asia, Bangladesh, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa and Argentina. In fact, the United Kingdom has more tornadoes, relative to its land area, than any other country. Fortunately, most UK tornadoes are relatively weak."

Oh yeah! While America's terrain and climate makes it the most prone area in the world to tornadoes, strong tornadoes can and often do strike the UK and Europe. They have had their fair share of F5 twisters. Italy has recently seen many strong tornadoes in a matter of weeks. F5 tornadoes are most likely to strike France, Germany and a few other spots in central Europe.

F5 tornadoes officially or unofficially on the record books for countries outside North America:

Germany, 1764 and 1800

Poland, 1931, 1946, 1960 (officially* rated F4, but rating disputed)

Italy, 1957 (rating disputed; may have been a high-end F4)

France, 1845 and 1967

NSW, Australia, 1970 (officially rated F4, but rating disputed)

Argentina, 1973 (no official rating)

Soviet Union, 1984 (two tornadoes, one official F5 and one disputed F4)

Total: 12

While this is a small number compared to the number of official F5/EF5 tornadoes in North America since 1950 alone (51; 50 in the US and one in Manitoba, Canada), it still demonstrates that top-rated tornadoes can and do develop throughout the world.

*All storms rated prior to 1974 are retroactively rated based on photos and damage reports.

I'm from Belgium (which is on a plain, mostly) and once or twice a year we get a small tornado that takes out a few houses.. but there's no definitely no tornado alley or anything like in the USA.

They happen everywhere, but Tornado Alley seems to have more than its share of them, because the terrain lends itself to them following that particular path.

The thing is, they're only really dangerous (and damaging) where they touch down.

NZ isn't noted for them (but we see the tail-end of many cyclones and hence tropical storms), but we've had a couple causing a lot of damage in the last few years. And I saw a couple when I lived in Britain many years ago

As this map shows, tornadoes are not only observed in the UK and Europe but in many other places around the world, as well.

We do get them in the UK though they are usually quite weak , they was one in Birmingham in 2005 that did quite a bit on damage..

We never get tornadoes in the UK, and they are rarely present in Europe. So no.

is not very common as well as in USA