WITH many local airports snowbound from Tuesday, residents of North Yorkshire and Teesside might be forgiven if they thought that the low rumbling they heard throughout the day and evening was thunder.

But in a pre-planned exercise during the morning an F15A Strike Eagle from the US Air Force based at Lakenheath spent sometime circling North Yorkshire at a height of 14,000ft and at speeds up to 500mph. After a brief lunch back at base the pilot returned repeating the high level aerial manoeuvres.

In the evening the role was taken over by a British jet, a Typhoon Eurofighter from RAF Conningsby, which also spent approximately an hour in an anti-clockwise zig-zag pattern, flying as far west as Wensleydale and the North Yorks Moors in the east.