IT IS the subject guaranteed to get everyone talking.

That is because the British weather is either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry or too windy and as we all know you just cannot rely on the weather forecasters because they nearly always get it wrong.

Generally speaking, weather wise here in Swindon we do not do too badly, but that could be down to luck.

For the geographical position of Wiltshire in the south of the country means that we are in an area where the risk from tornadoes is fairly high.

And not too many people know that, says Dr Terence Meaden, one of the country's leading authorities on the phenomenon.

"Most of the county is empty of property and the majority of tornadoes pass through open countryside where little damage is done," he said.

"But there are built up areas like Swindon where considerable damage would be done."

In fact 16 years ago a tornado with wind speeds reaching 114 mph caused considerable damage to a number of houses when it cut a path through the Ramleaze area of the town.

And a few years earlier an even more viol-ent tornado with winds of up to 136 mph smashed a large corrugated iron hangar on the airfield at Wat-chfield.

Up until 1974 very little was known about tornadoes in this country.

That is when scientist Dr Meaden decided to form the Tornado and Storm Research Organisation (TORRO) after his on-going weather research revealed that tornadoes were in fact regular features of the English weather.

"I came across so many reports of tornadoes and the damage they caused that it became too much for me to log and research on my own," he said.

So he got together with other like-minded people, formed TORRO and launched a scientific magazine.

Today, the organisation has a membership of 300 and is always on the lookout for more recruits.

Some of the statistics they have put together have surprised many of the so-called weather experts.

For instance, TORRO has discovered that the UK experiences an average of 33 or more tornadoes every year, a figure not greatly different from the annual average for the state of Oklahoma which is in North America's infamous "Tornado Alley".

In 1981, Britain had as many as 152 known tornadoes 104 of which developed in the space of five hours on November 23.

Only a dedicated organisation such as TORRO could succeed in assembling and documenting data to such a degree.

All information collated by TORRO is published continuously and Dr Meaden said that the aim is to use it to help understand extreme weather conditions and ultimately be able to warn that they are going to happen.

He said: "There is no way of stopping a Tornado forming, but it would be nice if we could predict them and issue warnings so that people can prepare and be aware of potentially dangerous sit-uations.

"At the moment we just cannot predict accurately enough to warn publicly when or where it will happen, but we can recognise the build up of weather cond-itions which could spawn a tornado."

As a pioneer in Tornado res-earch, Dr Meaden's exper-tise is much re-spected among the scientific community and it was to him that the British Atomic Energy Authority turn-ed to for advice when they built Sizewell.

"I found out that the tornado risk faced by the plant was double that which had been previously es-timated and the plans were modified accor-dingly," he said.

Dr Meaden like many other meteorologists is not convinced about global warming, and points out that the earth's weather patterns have always oscillated.

"We are in an upward curve now of getting warmer and as the world temperature goes up so there will be more thunderstorms.

"But I am not convinced that in the foreseeable future there will be more tornadoes.

"I think they will continue to average at the same rate as they do now."

TORRO is always on the lookout for more people to help them record severe weather conditions.

Membership details can be obtained by writing to Ray Peverall at 47, Malvern Drive, Stony Stratford, Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, MK11 ZAD.