Freak weather patterns may be something more akin to the 21st century and global warming.
But this picture shows that the unpredictability of Britain's most talked-about feature was still in force in the 1950s.
Some time around 1957 a mini-whirlwind at Ferrybridge, Weymouth, flipped these yachts over and took them all up to the Fleet.
The photo was shared with us by Jenny Farwell back in 2006. In the 1950s her father worked at Whiteheads torpedo works in Wyke Regis and also co-owned the Ferrybridge boat shed, where the boats were moored.
Jenny said: "Alec Palmer, my dad, owned the boat shed with the late Harold Winters. He was a labourer at Whiteheads, working on torpedo boats. He was called down from work and arrived in his overalls.
"They had to right the boats and take them back to the boat shed."
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