Several summer marquees were blown over and a number of people treated for injuries after unseasonal gales struck parts of North Wales, northern England and the Midlands yesterday.

The Blackpool championship dog show was disrupted when three marquees housing competing dogs were uprooted. The animals were flung to the ground in scenes of chaos as desperate owners tried to reach their prize animals.

At a military show in Caerwys, 20 miles (32km) from Colwyn Bay in Clwyd, where the winds in North Wales reached their strongest at 59mph, one man suffered severe injuries and two women were treated for minor injuries when a marquee collapsed. “We have been inundated with calls about weather-related incidents such as fallen trees and branches,” a spokeswoman for the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service said.

Elsewhere in North Wales a family of four were taken to hospital after a tree crashed through the windscreen of their car. None of them was injured. The spokeswoman added: “They had a very lucky escape.”

The A66, which runs across the country from Middlesbrough to Workington in Cumbria, was closed to all high-sided vehicles yesterday.

“It’s fairly unusual weather,” Dave Elliot, from the Met Office, said. “We don’t normally expect winds to be of this strength at this time of the year. If this was in winter, it wouldn’t be such a problem, but in summer the trees are in full leaf. They act as sails and are more likely to come down.”