Wivenswold

And I'm down-wind of you today. Damn it.

Lots of thunder about 8 miles to the South of here. Sadly it only really got going once it reached the North Sea. More clouds building inland towards Chelmsford & Braintree, hopefully these will give us a 'direct hit' storm.

4th storm of the year for me, that's 3 more than 2011. A few crackles here in EC3 as cell went very close. Just hope I can catch a decent one at home in NE Essex over the weekend as you can see very little sky here in the city.

The system is supposed to grind to a halt later. Looking at the radar it's not going to be dry in East London for much longer, the heavy stuff is nearing.

I'll be delighted if it does turn warm. I'm off to Somerset next weekend for All Tomorrow's Parties. Butlins can be very bleak in cold weather.

Have to say that I'm looking forward to hearing rain again. We had a little during the thaw, don't think I've seen any since then.

Flooding reported in the Colchester area. Must be surface water as Environment Agency haven't got alerts for nearby rivers. Called back Barking chum, definately lightning, so not sure why it's not shown on detectors.

Friend called from Barking, East London to say they've had lightning and torrential rain in the last few minutes.

Lights are flickering here, off to bed.

I do feel like I'm the only person on here who's actually enjoying an Atlantic winter. As much as I love snow it proved very hard work commuting daily through ice and snow. I ended-up taking holiday that would have been better used in the Summer. I'd love another huge snow event but would be more than happy to wait another winter. A few months ago I was asked by my boss "Another hard winter coming up?" I told her that my gut-feeling (based on nothing scientific) was that we'd have a return to a wet, windy and mild winter. She thinks I'm very clever at the moment. Another reason for me wishing the polar air stays away.

As much as it pains me to sound like I'm defending that rag, but at least they are quoting proper weather forecasters this time. Though 'heatwave' is a little OTT. I seem to recall a similar 'heatwave' early Jan 1998. I was in Brighton sitting on the beach in a T-shirt. It snowed around Easter time if my memory serves me well.

I'll keep on at him. I've also emailed The Daily Express editor.

I asked ExactaWeather (James Madden) where this White Christmas had gone. I received this in response..... "Thank you for contacting Exacta Weather. Exacta Weather is a voluntary service. Due to the large volume of requests that we are receiving at present, we are unable to respond to every request we receive. We will however endeavour to reply to as many requests as possible. ExactaWeather.com"

Best of luck my fellow leaky conservatory friend. I have only one bucket but I'm further north.

Wow, how close? I'm still in awe of those who have spotted this system so far in advance.

Final word maybe. A week out and the Met Office had a storm that still hasn't developed wrong by a couple of hundred miles. That's pretty impressive in my book.

Nice I'll be over there if anyone needs me.

Well, things may have calmed down a little on here in the last half hour but I'm wondering whether the mods want to set-up a seperate thread for people to discuss the Met Office and leave this one for nowcasting and model discussion. I'm frankly fed-up with having to scroll down past posters banging on about how rubbish the Met Office are and why they haven't issued personal warnings for every household in the country. Perhaps we could even have a "Think you're better than the Met Office?" predictions thread. There, I feel calmer already.

I'm kind of delighted that I'm not the only person who's discovered that they own a leaky conservatory tonight. At least all of my trees are still standing.

Got to agree with that BleakMidwinter. These forums would be very dull if we didn't show enthusiasm for types of weather than can kill or cause hardship: be it snow, ice, heat, fog, heavy rain, lightning, drought, gales, tornados, hurricanes or even sunshine. Perhaps there should be a seperate thread discussing risks associated with these gales and leave this one for people to get excited by extreme weather without feeling guilty.

On balance, fans of extreme weather probably save lives. The amount of times I've pre-warned my company, colleagues, friends and family about dangerous weather over the years. If that's multiplied by the amount of posters on this and other forums, then it's fair to say that someone's life has been enhanced by our interest in predicting the weather. Anyway, do tell Coast.

Good squall here. Hail and torrential rain, wind is rattling the back door. Wish it wasn't dark.

I'm pretty sure we had the potential for something similar a few months back. A shallow low hitching a lift on a strong jet stream and GFS gradually moving it North and downgrading it on each run in the 3 or 4 days before it hit. This could be a feature of GFS programming so this is why I'm less certain it will evolve as currently shown.

I think a serious dose of reality is required by anyone looking at models 7 days out in a set-up like this. You are almost certainly staring disappointment in the face. We have an extremely unstable system so nailing down detail 24 hours out is going to be difficult. All models point to shortwave developments heading towards the UK but don't even try to second guess where and when these will actually develop until we're in the +12hrs timeframe at most. Last thing we want is a weekend of toys being thrown out of the pram because the UK wasn't hit by a once in a 200 years windstorm event (24 years after the last one).

Ah the great unknown. There's very little doubt in the scientific community that the average temperature of the plant is increasing. What is not known is how that will effect each area. The breakdown of the North Atlantic Drift would certainly plunge the UK into seriously cold winters. The recent cold glitch appears to have been caused by a reduction in energy being given off by the sun but we are now coming out of the slack spell and this is perhaps evidenced by the warmer Autumn. But I'm not an expert in such things. One thing I should say is that Piers Corbyn is a character of little credibility in the UK. He makes dramatic claims about forthcoming weather events that mostly don't appear. When he eventually does get it right he goes overboard telling everyone that he's better than the Met Office. There was "even more to come" of the snow and ice in January according to Corbyn. It never came.