A FAMILY have said they are lucky to be alive after a huge tree fell down in storm winds narrowly missing their house and smashing into parked cars.

Olivia and Jamie Olorenshaw and their children aged seven and twelve were waking up to Easter Monday at her father's home in Tongdean Lane, Brighton when the 100-year-old tree from across the road came down in Storm Katie shortly before 7am yesterday.

Mrs Olorenshaw sad: "I thought it was thunder it was such a loud noise, like 'bam'.

"Our two youngest children [twins aged seven] were screaming and I just ran in and grabbed them out of the room.

"The car alarm was going off and I was wondering why and then I just saw what had happened and I said, 'we are lucky to be alive'.

"If it had come down at a slightly different angle, it would have gone straight into the house.

"My parents have lived here all their lives and they always said one of those trees was going to come down."

Both their cars parked outside the house were seriously damaged as was their neighbour's parked outside the house next door.

Emergency services received more than 600 calls across Sussex as Storm Katie battered southern England with winds of up to 70mph, but there were no reports of injuries.

Next to the King Alfred Leisure Centre on the Brighton seafront, seven of the iconic coloured beach huts had been blown over with several blown apart and destroyed.

Mr and Mrs Simon and Samantha Holroyd, of Hove, were surveying the wreckage of their beach hut on Monday morning after being given the bad news by the council.

Mr Holroyd, 48, said: "We were on holiday until last night so it is lucky that we came back today.

"We had been down here at Christmas and were just in the process of painting and redecorating it and then suddenly this happens and it is all a bit much.

"But all our possessions are still here - people have been good.

"Hopefully the insurance will cover it."

Beach huts along the seafront were previously destroyed during storms shortly after Christmas in 2013.

At Gatwick Airport 26 flights had to be cancelled and 23 diverted due to the bad weather and passengers told of "scary" aborted attempts to land as people were being sick and in tears.

Across Sussex people were waking up to trees fallen outside their house, with one crashing into the roof of a two-storey house in Preston Drove, Brighton, damaging tiles and guttering.

A neighbour said: "We heard a noise and I couldn't quite work out what had happened. Then I saw the tree was not quite at the angle it should have been."

In nearby Stanford Avenue bypassers stopped to take pictures of a large tree that had fallen onto the pavement and the road.

Nearby resident Nikolay Nikolov, 55, said: "I opened the window and saw it like that. For some the view will be better now but that's controversial really; we will miss that tree."

In Surrenden Crescent a tree smashed into a parked Volvo, destroying its bonnet.

Nearby neighbour Jeff Cooper, 46, said: "I just heard a big bang, a loud crash, and I looked out and that's where the tree was. The wind was really whipping through."