A VERY SCARY MOMENT

Dear Sir, I have been holidaying in Majorca at the same place for nearly 30 years before I was married, and after, and now with my three children I couldn't imagine going anywhere else. I love the area, we stay at the same place every time as my brother owns an apartment at El Toro. Before that, my parents owned it and my husband's parents owned one at the same place as well as an uncle. We have unspoilt views and the people are wonderful and always give us a great welcome.
While we were there two weeks ago we experienced the storm/hurricane or tornado on the morning of 5th of September, and I was scared.
All the years we have been out in Majorca we've seen gales, torrential rain and all the rest but, never have I seen anything like this. We were staying on the 6th floor at El Toro, that morning I was up at 7a.m. had a cuppa on the balcony just listening to the waves splashing over the rocks below us. What a beautiful sound. I noticed that to my right towards Santa Ponsa the sky looked a strange but yet lovely colour. It was nothing like I've seen before and it had a whirring noise almost like rolling thunder. But it wasn't above the clouds it felt like it was under us, I could still hear that noise at 9.50a.m. I woke my husband and said there is something strange here. Everything seemed to go very quiet and very still. No noise, no birds only the strange noise and then we saw waves that looked quite big out in the sea going sideways to the left towards Magalluf. The noise came closer and I could feel my heart pounding and I was scared. I didn't know what it was or what to do as the noise came closer. My husband and I just managed to shut the patio doors when the whole building began to shudder. The blackness and noise was horrific, I wondered whether it was a tidal wave. I got my three children out of bed and told them to get in the bathroom for cover, one of our doors just flung open but we managed to shut it again but the force was terrific. I prayed that we would all be safe within a few minutes. Then it was all over and the sun was shining, we looked out over our balcony and saw some of our restaurant roof had gone, sunbeds in the sea and pool umbrellas all over the place. On the main road it looked as though a bomb had gone off. Later we all gave a hand to clean up, walls had been blown down exposing the contents of the apartments. When we looked at all the damage it had done I thanked god that we were safe, and not many people were hurt, only cuts and grazes through the glass. My son had gone out the night before with relatives to a night club and came home at 6.30. I didn't want him to go but with persuasion we let him, if we hadn't he was going to take my younger son who is 7 down on the rocks to do some fishing as he had done a couple of mornings before. If he had I don't know what would have happened to them. They could have been hurt badly. So although we didn't want him to go to a night club it was a good job he did! Everything was restored to sort of normality with in a couple of days and I thank all the people and all the workers including the police for doing a superb job in getting everything back to normality. We had a party in the restaurant to celebrate and we all enjoyed the rest of our holiday. I think I will always remember that strange noise, but hope we don't experience that again. Still no one really knows what it was - a hurricane/tornado? In England the papers said it was a tornado and the Welsh paper said it was a hurricane. Does anyone know what it really was?
Katrina Hinder
Swansea.
Editor's note. The Palma Met Office said it was a tornado.