A summer storm destroyed tents and stalls at a market in Thailand.

Footage shows the devastated shops with canopies and frames dismantled due to the heavy rains in Bangkok on April 26.

One of the vendors Sumalee Phothirak said the weather seemed fine in the morning so they set up their stores only to be battered by freak winds in the afternoon.

She said: ‘It was really scary. We couldn't leave our stalls and had nowhere to go.'

The storm came as temperatures soared to 45 degrees Celsius last week during a heat wave across the Asia Pacific region.

Maximiliano Herrera, a climatologist and weather historian, described the scorching heat as the 'worst April heatwave in Asian history'.

In Thai capital Bangkok, residents were warned not to go outside amid 42 degrees Celsius temperatures causing power outages due to surging demand from air con units and fans running.

The country's national weather service said the heat index - what the temperature feels like when combined with humidity - hit a record 54C (129F).

The warm weather is now giving way to extreme tropical storms.

The Thai Meteorological Department warned that southerly and southeasterly winds prevailing over upper Thailand would strengthen between April 23 and 26.

Outbreaks of summer storms, accompanied by thunderstorms, gusty winds, hail, and lightning strikes, were expected to affect the northeastern and eastern parts of the country first, before spreading to other regions.