A passenger in a car records the moment a tornado is seen crossing over the M53 in Merseyside

A dramatic video has emerged of a tornado spotted over the M53 in Bromborough, Merseyside, UK on Wednesday afternoon.

In the footage, captured by a passenger in a car, motorists can be seen pulling on to the hard shoulder to avoid the dangerous driving conditions.

A Met Office spokesman said: "Although tornadic activity is by no means common across the UK, it does occur on occasions when the atmosphere is suitably volatile".

While Japan is recovering from former Typhoon Phanfone, Super Typhoon Vongfong will turn northward across the western Pacific Ocean and bring a new threat by the end of the week.

Vongfong brought flooding rainfall and damaging wind to the northern Mariana Islands on Sunday, local time. Wind gusts over 89 kph (55 mph) and rainfall over 75 millimeters (3 inches) were common.

Currently, Vongfong is nearly equivalent to a Category 5 hurricane with sustained winds of 250 kph (155 mph).

"Vongfong became the strongest tropical cyclone we've had all year anywhere on Earth," AccuWeather.com Meteorologist Jim Andrews said.

The strength of Vongfong earlier surpassed that of Super Typhoon Genevieve which, at its most powerful, had sustained winds of 257 kph (160 mph) in the West Pacific.

The combination of light wind shear and warm water allowed Vongfong to rapidly strengthen across the western Pacific Ocean so far this week.

Late in the week, while Vongfong is located south of Japan, the typhoon is expected to slow down and make a turn to the north. While there remains some uncertainty in the exact track of the storm, confidence is high that the powerful cyclone will track north toward Japan with the potential for a landfall in mainland Japan by early next week.

The Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation says bodies of Ebola victims have been left in the streets because of a strike by burial teams, who complain they have not been paid. Health Ministry spokesman Sidie Yahya Tunis says the situation is "very embarrassing" and said money was available to pay the teams. He promised to provide more information on Wednesday. The World Health Organization says Ebola is believed to have killed more than 600 people in Sierra Leone. In Spain, officials said a fourth person has been placed under observation for Ebola in a Madrid hospital where a nursing assistant that became infected after working with two victims from Sierra Leone and Liberia, who later died. The infected woman's husband is among those being observed. - ABC News

Bad Moon Rising:

"It's not Halloween just yet, but that doesn't mean the moon can't get a little freaky. The second blood moon of the year will light up the sky early Wednesday morning in North America, where it will be most visible from the Pacific coast, according to NASA. The Earth will position itself between the sun and the moon, creating a full lunar eclipse with a majestic red hue. The eclipse is the second in a rare series known as the tetrad, in which the moon is completely covered by the Earth's umbral shadow for four eclipses in a row, as opposed to only partial eclipses that fall in the outer penumbra. The next total lunar eclipse will be on April 4, 2015, according to NASA." - ABC News

Don't go round tonight, it's bound to take your life:

Three more people were put under quarantine for possible Ebola at a Madrid hospital where a Spanish nursing assistant became infected, authorities said Tuesday. More than 50 others were being monitored as experts tried to figure out why Spain's anti-infection practices failed. The nursing assistant, part of a special team that cared for a Spanish priest who died of Ebola last month, was the first case of Ebola being transmitted outside of West Africa, where a months-long outbreak has killed at least 3,500 people and sparked social unrest. Health authorities are investigating how she became infected. Her case highlighted the dangers health care workers face while caring for Ebola patients - officials said she had changed a diaper for the priest and collected material from his room after he died. Dead Ebola victims are highly infectious and in West Africa their bodies are collected by workers in hazmat outfits. - CBC

Super Typhoon Vongfong, as feared, intensified rapidly overnight Monday into Tuesday, U.S. time. The satellite image above with the classic distinct eye says it all.

As of midnight local time Wednesday, the eye of Vongfong was about 750 miles southeast of Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, moving west at 10-15 mph.

Maximum sustained winds had increased to an estimated 155 mph, the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane, according to the U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center.

Vongfong became the fifth super typhoon (150 mph max sustained winds or higher) of 2014. According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, Vongfong has now surpassed Genevieve for the most intense western Pacific typhoon of 2014 by estimated central pressure (905 millibars).

Violent storms lashed parts of southern France once again on Monday night leaving the city of Montpellier once again under water. Hundreds of residents were forced to evacuate their homes.

Around 300 people had to seek refuge in a sports gym overnight in the north of the city after water levels rose following more violent storms across the region.

The severe weather comes just days after Montpellier was left looking more like Atlantis when heavy rains caused the river Lez to burst its banks.

On Monday night the level of the river reached a similar height. Firefighters were called out dozens of times after the cities residents found their homes inundated with water. Several people had to be rescued by helicopter.

While Japan is now recovering from former Typhoon Phanfone, Typhoon Vongfong will continue to gain strength across the western Pacific Ocean this week.

Typhoon Vongfong brought flooding rainfall and damaging wind to the northern Mariana Islands through Monday, local time. Wind gusts over 89 kph (55 mph) and and rainfall over 75 mm (3 inches) were common.

Across the western Pacific Ocean, the combination of light wind shear and warm water will lead to conditions conducive for Vongfong to strengthen further through the middle of the week.

By the middle of the week, Vongfong is expected to be a super typhoon wind sustained wind near 150 mph (240 kph). This is equivalent to a strong Category 4 hurricane.

Late in the week while Vongfong is located to the south of Japan, the typhoon is expected to slow and make a turn to the north. While there remains some uncertainty in the exact track of the storm, confidence is high that the powerful cyclone will track north toward Japan will the potential for a landfall by early next week.

Many areas at risk from Vongfong are attempting to recover from more than 150 mm (6 inches) of rain and strong winds that hammered eastern Japan from Sunday into Monday as Typhoon Phanfone battered the region.

At least one person died and five remain missing after powerful Typhoon Phanfone struck Japan, bringing rough seas heavy rain and strong winds. About 50 people have been injured throughout the islands.

A member of US Air Force drowned as he was taking photos of the coast of the southern Okinawa Prefecture. Two more US personnel remain missing after the three were swept out to sea by powerful waves.

"Three officials were taking pictures with high waves whipped up by the typhoon in the background," a spokesman at local police told AFP. "One has been found dead, with the two others still missing."

On Sunday Japanese broadcaster NHK reported that one university student, aged 21, went missing while doing surfing near the city of Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture, central Japan.

The storm was near Yokohama, the second-largest city in Japan by population, 43km from Tokyo. Two men were reportedly buried in the mudslides in the city.

About 50 people across the country sustained injures during the typhoon, report the country's authorities.

Tokyo is bracing for potentially unprecedented high winds as Typhoon Phanfone makes a beeline for the world's largest metropolitan area.

The typhoon's effects have already proven deadly. One U.S. airman has been found dead and two others are missing after waves caused by Typhoon Phanfone swept them away in Okinawa, according to a U.S. military official.

The eye of Phanfone is now just south of Japan's Pacific coast and moving east-northeast on a track that is likely to take it directly over Tokyo between 9 a.m. and noon Monday local time (8 and 11 p.m. EDT Sunday in the U.S.).

The Japan Meteorological Agency predicts sustained winds of 80 mph with gusts to 115 mph at that time. If such winds are measured in Tokyo, they would be the strongest ever recorded there.

According to JMA records, Tokyo's strongest sustained wind on record is 69.3 mph, recorded in a typhoon on Sept. 1, 1938. The city's strongest wind gust on record was 104.5 mph, recorded the same day.

An archived 1938 newspaper article from the Canberra Times says approximately 100 people died in the 1938 Tokyo typhoon.

Former Super Typhoon

At one point on Saturday, the U.S. military's Joint Typhoon Warning Center analyzed 150 mph winds within Phanfone, designating it super typhoon. The JTWC has since reduced its estimate of those winds slightly.

The victim was left struggling to walk after gale-force winds and flooding ravaged Sevastopol in southern Russia last week

This is the heart-stopping moment a man was swept up into the air while trying to escape a powerful hurricane.

The YouTube video shows the Russian man desperately clinging to a flimsy canopy in an attempt to resist the power of the hurricane.

But when it hits, the structure - with the man still holding on for dear life - is tossed 30ft through the air and onto concrete stairs.

Tropical Storm Simon became the eighteenth named storm of the 2014 eastern Pacific hurricane season off the coast of Mexico early Thursday.
Simon is embedded in an environment of relatively low wind shear (changing wind direction and/or speed with height typically hostile to developing or mature tropical cyclones), moist air, and warm sea-surface temperatures which should support strengthening for the next few days. Simon may become a hurricane in the next day or so.

Simon is expected to track toward the west-northwest over the next several days, with its center likely to remain offshore of the Mexican Pacific coast.

That said, outer rainbands on the periphery of Simon's circulation will continue to wring out locally heavy rain through Friday, which could trigger flash flooding and mudslides across western Jalisco, western Sinaloa, Nayarit in western Mexico. In addition, high surf and dangerous rip currents will also threaten coastal areas.