seb

Snow and Ice warning extended to cover mid and east Kent and Essex MetO showing light snow between 5pm and 8pm for Ashford tonight and then heavy snow changing to light snow between 3am and 9am tomorrow morning I have a feeling we'll see more than yesterday!

Indeed. The MetO hourly forecast and the BBC hourly forecast (now using Meteogroup) don't use high res models for a few days out and streamers hardly ever show up on non-high res models.

Fully agree with all of the above. We had gusts of 60mph in SE Kent, trees down, fences down, even Medway had tress down with some major roads blocked. Not sure I agree with the MetOffice being a company having lost a major contract though. It's still a government service, albeit with commercial targets. Severe Weather Warnings should be the main remit and twice in a week they have dropped the ball. This is even worse when considering that a number of private weather services did issue the correct warnings. What makes me really angry is the TV and radio forecasts where you have either meteorologists or presenters stating that "it's going to be a windy day with gusts up to 70mph" as if it's nothing just because there is no MetO warning whereas the second there is a warning they act as if the end of the world is upon us.

Which is fine but the lack of warnings today and last week (in fact removing an existing warning just to issue another one AFTER the storm has arrived and already caused damage) is an entirely different kettle of fish. Not quite sure what is going on in Exeter.

It’s baffling! Especially after the booboo last week.

Very messy indeed. To put it into perspective - last week’s top gusts in high population areas in Germany were 62mph and 8 people were killed, including two firefighters.

Fully agree with this assessment. Majority of models showing this. There better be MetO warnings by the end of the morning to avoid a repeat of last week. They did e-mail me about last week and all but admitted that they shouldn't have removed the warning from the SE. Tomorrow's storm is going to hit the region in time for morning rush hour and will go on until mid afternoon with gusts around 60mph across the majority of the region. Not something to be sniffed at during daytime.

I don’t know. I’m ignoring a lot of models but AROME and the DWD one yet again show >65mph for several hours. Also, Kachelman Wetter and AccuWeather state locally damaging gusts between 6am and 3pm >65mph. Both were spot on last week. MetO going for 50mph max.

Looks like another 8-9 hours of gusts in excess of 60mph on Wednesday along with lots of rain. This time it’s during the day, starting around morning rush hour continuing until just before the evening rush hour.

Looks like we were both right! It’s insane outside, can’t even let dogs in the garden.

Wow. This sounds worse than two weeks ago.

It's the update text that makes the odd choice obvious - "This is an update to the warning, shrinking the yellow area and also the validity period.Gusts of 50-60 mph are likely quite widely. There is some uncertainty over the peak gusts, but there is a small chance of winds reaching 70 mph in places - most likely across coastal north Wales and northwest England during the middle part of the night and then across parts of Lincolnshire and East Anglia early on Thursday morning." Very odd considering AROME, ARPERGE, ICON and the Germans are showing exactly those speeds across most of England, higher along Channel coasts and even higher in EA early morning.

Yes I agree re warning - seems like a very strange choice to me. AROME has been very good with gust speeds during storms and is painting a very different picture to the MO warning. Also I have a "feeling" about this storm.

I think we had a tornado or microburst in Ashford. Fences, trees, street signs down very locally (our house and a few neighbours) but all of it has fallen in the wrong direction against the general wind direction. Not ever experienced anything like it! Massive conifer in back garden was horizontal at one point!

Heavy snow now in Great Chart, temp 0.4 and DP 0.7. MetO warning just been updated for 2-5cm above 100m.

The area from Medway over West Malling & Kings Hill down to Sevenoaks/Tonbridge has been under the torrential rain conveyor belt since noon. Drove from West Malling to Snodland earlier and roads that usually have a little bit of flooding are flooded in a way that I have not seen before. What a difference to yesterday when we had sunshine while Ashford was being flooded... today it's been pretty much dry there!

Yep towers keep building very quickly, some thunder and then they quite quickly move ENE. Then repeat. Every now and then we get a minute of big fat rain drops. It feels tropical almost like Central Florida.

Yeah came out of nowhere within 10-15 minutes. Massive tower right above me. 4 lightning strikes & loud thunder in the last few minutes. 10 seconds of huge tropical rain drops...

Lightning strike and loud thunder from a huge tower that's gone up over the last ten minutes in West Malling.

Can't remember the last time the MetO forecast mentioned the word severe! SE forecast for tomorrow: Thunderstorms will become more widespread and probably locally severe with hail and large amounts of rainfall. Let's see what the updated warning later this morning says but I can't help being a tiny bit excited First though a hot day today!

Can't remember the last time the MetO forecast mentioned the word severe! SE forecast for tomorrow: Thunderstorms will become more widespread and probably locally severe with hail and large amounts of rainfall. Let's see what the updated warning later this morning says.

Worth a breaking news alert from the Sky News app - "It's the hottest June day since 1976 with temperatures reaching 33.9C at Heathrow, the MetOffice said"

Scorching 33 degrees in West Malling yet 10 minutes down the A228 towards Medway it's "only" 26/27.

Yes. Moderate.