Joey.G

Am at Reading festival this w/e, it was the perfect place to watch lines of anvils passing to the North of the site, only a couple of showers here tho luckily since I would have got drenched!

Hiya, What a terrible August its been for storms! I always thought when I was young that the storms avoided me, always flashing away to the East or the West, rarely overhead. Now, with the availability of radar, my scope of oberservation is widened and they're avoiding me on a national scale! Im sure all enthusiasts feel like that sometimes. Today was another disappointing day for some im sure, I know it was only 10% chance or so but it felt like more I saw some excellent convective cells over Dartmoor earlier on the very back edge of the cloud associated with the CF. Really dark textured bases stretching from horizon to horizon but for whatever reason it remained only very shallow convection. Two good things from today though, I drove 450 miles from Glos to Penzance and back and it actually wasnt that arduous, I feel like im ready to drive 600 miles at a time accross the midwest states! Secondly, ive been doing alot of reading on the weather basics and im on a [i]very[/i] steep learning curve, but now the passage of a cold front without the presence of storms is just as fascinating! So, even though the storms are avoiding me, im getting my fix elsewhere Attached is a pic taken looking out west from the coast of Cornwall this afternoon, I think it might be the trough that was out over the Irish sea today. Are these sheared?

hmmm £50 for last min overnight ferry rides, 3 hours to Dover then 3.5 hours to Venlo on the Belgum Germany border... extremely tempting, wouldnt even miss any work :blink:

Im off to Poland for 3 weeks in September, far eastern poland though and I bet by then it will just be a bit grey and chilly... Still, ill have my camera with me! Edit: Wtf just watched that second vid. Thats insane!

Hiya Ive been reading the posts about the upcoming week and its attendant storm potential and ive been getting quietly excited like many of us. As Dogs32 said: agree with this being too far away at present for anyone to get too excited................... ..party time! That made me laugh. As Thursdays normally my day off (which has been very lucky these past couple months!) Ill probably go chasing again but in the mean time I found some old pics. I hope someone remembers this day. I never got to see anything much as I was working and had no idea it was coming but I took some pics of the anvils as it went by. The day was June 19th 2007, heres a grab from the radar archive [img]http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/7145/radarfloodcausingstorm2.jpg[/img] The storms that passed near to me were described as being worst in a decade, with 31mm of rain in 30 mins in Bristol and I remember them being in the news that evening. I cant find very much about them now on the internet. Heres a news article from Worcester news: [url="http://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/1483634.worst_floods_in_a_decade_batter_worcestershire/"]http://www.worcester...worcestershire/[/url] I tried to find something from the NW archives but unsuccessfully so if anyone can help that would be awesome! I can remember these storms being different from storms we normally get, the clouds seemed simply bigger, they also seemed wetter/more humid/more 'tropical'. Kinda hard to describe but maybe something of what I mean comes over in the photos. So, with the coming week in mind, here they are. If anyone else has any photos, accounts of the storms or links where I can read about them and dream some more, id love to hear from you! Joe [attachment=86319:DSCF0636.jpg][attachment=86318:DSCF0632.jpg][attachment=86317:DSCF0631.jpg][attachment=86316:DSCF0628.jpg][attachment=86315:DSCF0627.jpg]

Sounds very plausible, hmmm, now I really want to know! Some reading is needed....

[quote name='Somerset Squall' date='28 July 2009 - 20:08 ']Welcome to Netweather Joey. Some really nice cloud structures there. Good luck on capturing some lightning, I'm sure you'll succeed! SS [/quote] Thanks alot, ill be doing my best! This site is going to help alot I think. I see your more of an enthusiat for the big tropical storms than our home grown stuff. I wonder if you can answer a question thats been plauging me for a while now. Ive seen quite alot of footage from hurricanes etc from watching programmes like savage earth an the like, but there never seems to be any lightning in them. I would have thought there would be plenty potential to build up charge, even if the discharges ended up being solely IC. Any ideas? Joe

Hi, My name is Joe. Ive never blogged before, nor have I really read anyone elses so ill be guessing how this works... I am an amater storm chaser of sorts, most of the charts dont mean alot to me yet so chases are generally impromptu and often misguided but Ive got to try! I love extreme weather, especially lightning and ive been trying for a while now to take photos of it but ive been rather unlucky. Ive only recently discovered this online community and got my radar subscription so hopfully soon ill be able to post my first real lightning pics! Anyway, heres some photos ive taken over the years prior to 2009 when ive not been stuck in work or traffic. Some are taken in my proverbial backyard from unexpected events, some ive driven miles for and not represented are the thousands of miles ive driven for nothing lol. Now I gotta go to work, bring on the next storm! Joe PS If anyones interested in getting some bigger res images for desktops etc. just send me a message

Yeah even if it was just a shower, it was still nice to take a direct hit from some of the most 'severe' weather in the country at the time! Managed to snap a couple of quick shots while out on delivery before it started to rain. This is the line approaching Stroud BTW - Andy Brown & Dave48 thanks for the comments! The anvil in my sig was taken on 12th August last year, it was one of the first days I actually went out driving after storms. Ill have to get a gallery on the go as ive got tons of pics. That day I never really saw much except nice clouds and I dont think even those in my sig were electrified. Then, much later at night, one did produce a few flashes and I got my first ever lightning on still camera! It remains to this day the only pic ive got despite driving many miles. Doh! Hopefully discovering this forum will change that for me soon

No work for me on thursday nor till friday night, I might take another trip to the SE since I know the way and im still running LPG!

CAPE has been building here, we have had a couple of short torrential bursts but no thunder as yet. The clouds dont look to be getting very high before anviling but from what ive just been out watching id be suprised if there were no reports of thunder on here by this evening. Couple of pics just taken

Just had a torrential shower here, blue sky coming now. Hope the sun stays out long enough to get some heat building up!

Bit of a late post but, hard as it is to believe, im pretty certain I saw my first funnel cloud today B) Given the fairly un-stormy conditions today I was suprised to say the least! These pics were taken shortly after I started work at around 18:30pm in Stroud, Glos. I have altered the contrast alot so that the shape is discernable but other than that and a crop its untouched. I spotted it as you see it and shot a couple of pics, then delivered the pizza I was holding since I was outside the guys house. By the time I did that it was beginning to dissipate but I headed to higher ground anayway, alas, nothing more to see. I could definitely see some motion but it was pretty small and far away to clearly see any rotation. Ive attached a pic that i took from the higher ground of the cell as it moved away. It dropped some heavy rain nearby to me but no thunder/lightning as far as im aware.

Hard to believe whats going on in the rest of the country, looks and feels like a poor day in march here! I hope all the SE people have removed 'storm starved' from their sigs On an off topic note, has anyone seen the latest BBC weather photo gallery? 2nd pic from scotland with 3 funnels in one shot! Link here: BBC weather photo gallery Sounds amazing! Congrats :wub:

Anyone down near Weymouth? Bright echo on radar approaching.... DT1 for NWradar users. Seems to be intensifying a little over the past hour. Maybe a late night encoure for the S coast

Anyone got any opinion on this sqally line about to pass over me? Im in Gloucestershire, GL10 for NW radar users.

As someone has said above, the decline in thundery activity can be explained by natural climate variability and I think we would need to see a much longer record of thunder days to determine if there is a trend or if this is just normal fluctuation. This post has reminded me about something I learned almost by accident while doing some research for a paper. I was looking into the spike in deaths recorded in many parish records associated with the last real super eruption, that of the Laki fissure volcano in Iceland. Many of the deaths were related to A, increased particulate matter and sulperous gasses in the atmosphere causing respiritory problems and B, Exceptionally hot summers occuring as a result of the greenhouse effect of the gasses from the eruption. These two products of the eruption resulted not only in the spike in deaths, but also in a increase of severe thunderstorms. Infact I was reading accounts from the time that described people running screaming in the streets as they thought the apocalypse had come such were the unprecedented severity of the storms. The newspaper coverage suggested that in the summer of 1783 (July onward) the storms affected most of the country and were unprecedented in their severity and frequency, described in one correspondance as 'unremitting'. Although this is an extreme case i think it illustrates that storm frequency / severity is very sensitive and is influenced by more variables than we might expect. I dont know why we seem to be on a negative trend at the moment but im willing to bet that its not permenant!

Yeah I know what you mean, this forum and NWradar are new to me and ive been gettin a bit overexcited this past week. Been all over the country and seen virtually nothing. I wondered why so many people sit at home and complain when a storm misses them when they could go to it! Now I think im starting to get it... Still, ive gotta try if I think of last night as 'almost there!' its not so bad, sounds like it was epic in some lucky corners of the country (Neil!)

I decided it was worth a shot driving from Stroud in Gloucestershire when I saw the radar at about 11.30pm, by the time I got to Worthing there was only rain and the fog from the roads left :lol: So I drove home

Post number 1! To report that I live nr Stroud, Glos (GL10) driven the full length of the M5 today, a little too late after work to catch the Birmingham area cells so decided to turn round and head to the south and hopefully get some night lightning. Just arrived in Plymouth at my brothers and checked the NWRadar..... Didnt get a spot of rain as I passed Bristol. Heres to chasing: 99% disappointment, 1% pure joy/wonder/awe