Weathering the storm: Your views

Most parts of the country experienced severe weather

BBC News Online users have been e-mailing in their experiences and describing the fear they felt being caught up in the worst storms to hit northern England and Scotland for a decade.

Hundreds of thousands of people are counting the cost of the devastation. Seven people died in weather-related incidents on Monday - five after lorries turned over in high winds.

My five-year-old daughter was lifted up and blown into a wall

Sheena Johnson

Many more suffered damage to their homes and businesses, and experienced travel chaos as roads and bridges were shut, and train services cancelled.

Patricia Hughes, from Newcastle upon Tyne, said the wind had sent her chimney stack crashing through the roof of her house, leaving a five-metre wide hole.

"It was terrifying because the gust of wind prior to the collapse was incredible but the noise continued as the chimney crashed through," she said.

'Panic'

"I fled the house and phoned my son. For a while I didn't know what to do or who to contact first.

"Normally I am very capable but I lost it for a while!"

Cars were struggling to stay on the road - with the foot down on the accelerator, the car was barely making 35 to 40 miles an hour

Rania Suter

Sheena Johnson, another user from England, described a terrifying ordeal experienced by her daughter, who was swept up in a gust of wind during her school playtime.

"My five-year-old daughter was lifted up and blown into a wall. She has suffered a black eye and bad bruising," she said.

Rania Suter from York described how she and her husband ran into the bad weather on a journey home from Loch Ness in Scotland, where they had been on a short holiday to celebrate her birthday.

Lorries were overturned in the wind

"When we were past Fort William going down the A82, about 200 metres away from us a truck got blown off the road as if someone had picked it up and thrown it to the other side.

"Me and my husband were utterly in a state of panic. The road was closed and we had to take the longer road to get home.

"Cars were struggling to stay on the road. With the foot down on the accelerator, the car was barely making 35 to 40 miles an hour.

'Major headaches'

"The wind was blowing a massive amount of water off the lochs. It was amazingly scary and mesmerising."

A journey home from work that would normally take 20 minutes resulted in a two-and-a-half hour epic

Kevin Thomas

Kevin Thomas also experienced problems travel in Scotland.

He said Glasgow was brought to a standstill from 4pm because of the winds.

"A journey home from work that would normally take 20 minutes resulted in a two-and-a-half hour epic that had me driving from one side of Glasgow to the other.

"By 4pm the winds had died but the Kingston bridge, Glasgow's main artery to the east and west, remained closed.

"This caused major headaches for commuters as they approached the bridge unaware that it was still closed to traffic"

Although Scotland and the north of England bore the brunt of the gales, the effects of severe weather were also experienced further south.

Louise Heavens e-mailed BBC News Online to say she had parked her Kawasaki sportbike near Embankment in London, and had returned to find it "100 metres down the road, completely smashed up".

"Apparently the wind picked up the bike and flipped it over," she said.

Nabeed, from Scotland, was driving home to Dunblane through the gales but discovered that about 20 miles from Carlisle the M6 was closed because "numerous trucks" had been blown over by the wind.

"All the traffic from the M6 was diverted through small villages. The delays and queues were unbelievable. "

Have you had any encounters with the horrendous weather conditions currently sweeping the country? If so, please send us your experiences using the form below.