Storms and Convective discussion - May 2024

[Harry's House]

 Windblade  Eagle EyeAlso like you, I had continuously lightning flashing silently. Only a little faint thunder around 1am and no rain. I won't complain about a dry night after the recent wet weather waterlogging my garden though.

[Southern Storm]

 Sprites Thanks, I was located at Portsdown hill, overlooking Portsmouth so I don't think they are related. 

[Dangerous55019]

Morning all.

Well although I was well out of the area for last nights fun and games, this morning whilst walking the dog at 05:00 it had a feeling of ‘the morning after a storm’!

Anywhooo… I see that the U.K. Meto have just issued a yellow thunderstorm warning for today… And slightly further north! 
 

As always… Good luck to everyone with this today, and let’s hope it’s the start of a good thundery season.

[ChannelThunder]

Our very own @Southern Storm has made both the BBC homepage and their news front page too! Congratulations dude!

 

[James175]

 Storm_Sikher what time was this? I went to bed in the end after the first cell looked to be dying off before it got to Gravesend 

[Frosty hollows]

Not the best. View to my SE as the lightning looks as though it's reflecting off surfaces

 

[ChannelThunder]

Looking ahead, possibly a few rumbles into the south coast at the weekend. UKMO keen to move the low from the SW out more quickly, but could be storms Saturday night associated with that. Meanwhile the ECM stalls the low and keeps a risk going into Sunday evening.

[Frosty hollows]

 weatherobsuk Ah shame you didn't venture a few miles East of Benson to either Cholsey hill or Kingstanding hill as they're the highest points round here. We really got going after 4with a light show before the thunder and rain arrived. Round 2 arrived about 6am with one of the loudest bangs I've ever heard- turns out a house in Wallingford was hit and badly damaged. Luckily nobody got hurt!

[Shaunado]

I woke up around 1am and looked out the window to see a flash lighting up the clouds every second or so - very frequent, but couldn't see where it may have been focused. No thunder heard but there was a consistent strong breeze. I woke up again later and the sky was still flashing away! I wish I had the health to get put of bed to take a proper look, but I expect from the radar a lot of lightning was from storms initiated nearby and intensified as they drifted west. A great start to the new month, and probably even more so for a number of you! 

[Storm_Sikher]

 James175 1:30AM mate, The first cell was dying as it headed West from around Margate, but it recycled and picked up, There wasn't a single rumble of thunder though, the second lot hit after 3A.M and I slept through that!

[Rush2019]

 Dangerous55019   Yes, I've had a heads up on my phone app.  Will be radar and sky watching,  I fear I'm too far North though, see what happens.

[Ryan H]

When I was asleep around 2.24 AM and again at 3.24 AM. I had saw the flash outside which created some rumbling. It has a gap after the first impact before the second one takes place.

[Sparkiee storm]

Couple of sferics in a small cell north of ludlow in the Midlands.

[Dale Hay]

What an early morning experience. I was awake for the storm as it came near by and then directly overhead. Then never in my life, at around 5:30am, have I witnessed thunder so loud and rumbly that it not only shook the house (making it creak), shook the furniture, shook my insides, but you could also 'feel' the air around violently rattle too.

That storm alone makes up for all the years I've missed out. Cheers for that, Mother Nature.

[Eagle Eye]

Close up of my only CG last night as far as I know. 

[Dangerous55019]

 Rush2019 Morning @Rush2019

Yeah… I know exactly what you mean… But certainly with regards to storms since 2019, just outside the warning area means that we’ve probably got a good chance.

Fingers and everything else crossed!

[Dorsetbred]

1 hour ago, ChannelThunder said:

Our very own @Southern Storm has made both the BBC homepage and their news front page too! Congratulations dude!

And according to the BBC @Southern Storm you are now officially an "Onlooker"!

[Flash bang flash bang etc]

Good storms. Elevated - only saw about 4 forks out of about probably 2000 flashes over 3 hours. Essentially it was backbuilding over our area.

7/10 I think - not exceptional and hampered by heavy rain. Not being able to see the lightning directly was a little bit frustrating but the intensity of it was pretty impressive

When’s the next one?

[Wade]

A cell has popped up near Norwich, I am hoping I am in for a shout today. Had one thunderstorm this year in a form of a squall line in April which was cool but nothing like some here have experienced last night.

[LightningLover]

Blimey. What a night... Whilst it wasn't the most severe storm I've ever seen, the lightning frequency and longevity of it was truly something to behold. The first flashes became visible at around 22:20, with the initiation of the new cells ahead of the french MCS. It then quickly ramped up in frequency, reaching an astonishing hour long peak between 00:30-01:30. In that time frame, the sky was lit in a solid arc from the  WSW all the way to the ESE, with additional flashes emanating from outflow cells that were in inland East Sussex- We were effectively surrounded. Rudimentary counting between flashes became futile, as each flash had less than a second between them. Most of the time the flashes were IC, but occasional CG's and C-Cs provided louder booms and more substantial camera footage.

Some amazing structure was visible for a short while, with a long and tall roll cloud present within the line. Another thing we noticed was the constantly shifting wind direction and brief fluctuations in temperature; It was apparent that the storm had strong inflow, and as it moved closer there was a brief surge of outflow winds too. The first arc moved WNW over Eastbourne and surrounding areas by 01:45, and after that another 'finger' of rapidly organising convective activity seemingly followed the same path, with almost the same intensity. This slowly trundled it's way towards Eastbourne and beyond, and by 02:30 only distant flashes and cloud top reflections remained. We (me and @Electricmumma) then called a taxi home, tired but smiling!

Overall, based on different factors, this storm gets a rating of 8.75/10 from me. Could have been much closer to 10, had the beefy looking cores on radar gone overhead rather than skim the coastline. An extremely impressive display for so early in the season, and the lightning amounts were up there with some of the greats in my lifetime!

[Turquoise]

Any actual indications of storms in Cheshire today? Wanted to go for a picnic but don't know if its worth the risk. Pretty much everytime there is a storm warning up here it's a beautiful sunny day all day and thats been exactly the same so far today so I've learnt by now that a storm warning means the opposite...but you can gaurentee the day I ignore it will be the day they get it right. 

[Eagle Eye]

Only some screenshots of the lightning last night. There's something like 30 here and only 1 CC properly visible though to be fair, there were more that I shared earlier. 

A clear and beautiful updraft as well. Only lasted for at best 30 minutes but that was tilted right up into the storm. Didn't get much of it though. 

Some videos with the first one being the one where the stops brushed the coast. With frequent lightning ahead of me. My phone camera only tended to pick up 1 in 4 lightning strikes last night. 

 Then the updraft.

Finally, where the static charge in the air seemed to turn to noise on the camera then an audible pop before before of the lightning strikes. The air was very electric. The static kicks in around 5 seconds. Volume up. Meanwhile my camera was pointed up towards the flickers centred roughly above me. 

 

Some extra lightning photos just to add to the chaos around me. Id give it an 8/10 just struggled to put down and visible bolts and more flashes but for rate of lightning it's the most since a storm in 2018 for me I would guess at. However, that one only lasted 1 and a half hours. This one kept going for 5.

The reason I didn't zoom in was to get that reflection off the window. Think I'll start doing that more often, the star trails feature on my phone is really good for lightning photos. 

And a few more videos to add to that. This time from the storm to the north. I must've seen about 10000 lightning strikes. Very few were being picked up on the sites though. 

 

   

 

Might have a few more from that northern storm to come later. Don't think my camera got much but I'll see if I can get much off of it as well. Mostly too distant for my camera which I try and get CG's with so keep Iso low. 

 

 

 

Edited May 2 by Eagle Eye

[Tamsin]

I popped down to Box hill after work last night and observed about 7000000 flashes. Got some good wind gusts and hail.  Like Flash Bang etc only witnessed 4 bolts, three of which were seen whilst I was driving.  No complaints, I was just a little late to the party.

[Rush2019]

 Dangerous55019   yes a big hello to you @Dangerous55019  We may see something, there is some CAPE this pm around the Wales/Cheshire and Dee estuary areas (UKV).  I'm giving myself whiplash already by constantly looking up for instability.

[Turquoise]

 Rush2019 im just up the road from Macc, heading out for a picnic with the missus. Talks of possible storms later but usually that means the opposite will happen. No signs of instability that I can see so far, although it's very humid