IanR

Weather warnings do tend to jinx things dont they lol, The best storms seem to come when you least expect them,when there is a warning in force and you wait for somthing to happen it never does. However going back a decade or two when storms where forcast they usually happened too! I remember Francis Wilson on breakfast TV forcast saying the heatwave will come to end in spectacular fashion this evening as thundery weather moves north acrooss the county,It got me very ecxited. Later in the dayI noticed the sky going a little dark,I opened the bathroom window upsatirs at the back of the house and noticed a line of dark cloud to my north east about 3 miles away spitting out CG strikes every 10 secs,they where very vivid,with constant low growling thunder,then another cell suddenly kicked off almost overhead to my west with cannon like blasts. The storms slowly moved away only to be replaced by another batch overnight. Good times.

I am old enough to remember the seventies and eighties and it was almost gauranteed that a hot spell like the one we have just had would give at least one thunderstorm in a given location,and usually something quite spectacular as the hot spell would come to an end. What baffles me is why its so different now?,I am not a weather expert or that knowlegeable in atmospheric dynamics but something has changed,this might sound silly but if there is an increase in co2 in the armosphere does that not mean the air is more heavy,now we now that convection is caused by warm air expanding thus becoming lighter and then rising rapidly causing cumulus the if there is enough energy cumolonimbus and thunderstorms,could heavy air be making this harder to happen,just a thought??.Could someone enlighten me because its very notable in my neck of the woods how thunder storms seem less and less.saying that we have had a few rumbles from this hot spell and a decent storm mid June with lots of close and scary CG strikes.But I think we just got lucky there.