A WOMAN told of her shock after a tree crashed onto her car in Weymouth.

The tree in Melcombe Regis Cemetery crashed through the boundary wall and fell across Newstead Road and landed on Jo Hudson-Cook’s car parked in her driveway.

It was among those uprooted in Friday night’s vicious storm.

The road was blocked overnight and into Saturday while the obstruction was cleared.

Ms Hudson-Cook, 53, said: “I was upstairs watching TV, heard a terrific crash and looked out of the window and then saw one of those enormous trees just lying horizontally.

“The boot of my car’s all twisted, and there are numerous dents in it from the pinecones that came down. The front end of the car was compressed by about six inches.”

Ms Hudson-Cook said she was thankful the incident took place late at night and that nobody was hurt.

She said: “Thank God nobody was underneath. If this had been at five o’clock in the afternoon, this is when all of the main traffic is hurtling through.”

The road was cordoned off for half an hour after the tree collapsed, with council workers arriving early the following morning to chop the tree and remove debris.

Ms Hudson-Cook added: “Within an hour or so, they had cleared it and it was fit for traffic again.

“They did a great job.”

Olive Hutchings, 80, lives a couple of doors down from Ms Hudson-Cook’s house.

She said residents had successfully petitioned for the removal of trees before only for a similar type of trees to be planted in their place.

She said: “We expected them to put some bushes in. I don’t know what their argument is. If they say it’s to shield the gravestones from us, what’s the point?

“A low hedge would have been a lot better.”

Mrs Hutchings, who suffers from asthma, said the incident had left her without a landline for the next three or four days.

“There’s no telephone which means no Careline. I’ve got no phone other than a little mobile. I had three lots of wires across the garden.

She suggested it would be safer if the trees were chopped back or removed.

She added: “It would be goodbye my house if that tree came down. I wouldn’t stand a chance.

“It’s very frightening, especially when you live on your own.”