Lauren

Had a bit of rain, can't say it feels particularly stormy.

This bad boy has blown up all of a sudden. It does have a flatbase, but this is the best I could get out of the window. Looks a lot angrier in real life.

Even with the key, I still don't understand it!

The weather has been split personality today. It's literally been downpour, sunny, downpour, sunny, downpour, sunny.

Well with all due respect Hastings is quite a way from Medway Ok hot was probably the wrong word, i'd say warm and humid. Put it this way, you'd be very comfortable in a vest top and 3/4 lengths.

It had to wait until i got out my car and walked to head office to torentially downpour didn't it. I look like a drowned rat. Certainly some interesting clouds and it's hot between the downpours which is a good sign.

Just hazy rain here.

What are the chances for the next couple of days and North Kent over the weekend? I'm getting clashing opinions for different sources. Also what's Lydd looking,like over the weekend as we're heading down there.

No, it's just teasing us

We haven't had anything yet although there's still a big looming grey cloud with lots of scud.

Very dark cloud approaching and you can see the rain pouring from it from a few miles away. Should be interesting when it arrives. It doesn't look very dark in this picture.

Light hail shower there that's gone on for about 5 minutes.

Will there be anymore heavy rain/thundery showers for Medway this evening?

Had two very heavy downpours, not sure if I heard thunder as it was quite busy on the street. No lightening I don't think. Driving through the town in the heaviest downpour I did have a giggle at everyone who literally looked like they'd just gone swimming.

Can someone in London go on the bridge and wave to us?

Do you think we're likely to get a second batch later?

I hope if there is a storm today it doesn't happen until I get home from work at around 5pm. I'm stuck inside all day.

How reliable is that map. because it shows a lot of lightening strikes over North Kent and unless I'm blind, deaf or missing chunks of my life there has been nowehre near that amount.

There's 2 more I can remember from camping and a caravan holiday: We were on a family holiday to Devon in the caravan. The day had started off a scorcher. You could feel the burn on your skin as soon as you stepped out the door and there was a strong heat haze everywhere. Later in the day it went very very humid so much so your face was constantly clammy. As we spent the last few hours on the beach we saw big Cu building up followed by some serious anvils. As the BBQ was coming to an end we felt spots of that hot rain coming down and we went inside. About 5 minutes later we all jumped out of our skins as the brightest flash and the biggest bang shook the caravan. Then the heavens opened and it didn't stop raining until about 10am the next day. It got hotter and hotter and hotter until we were sitting inside the caravan with the windows wide open to let out the humidity. The flashes were every second and lots of fork lightening and ground strikes as well as it crawling across the sky. The lightning was all different colours and the thunder was just constantly rolling. The power ent out on the site so we all just sat in darkness drinking tea and wine and beer (not the kids obviously!) and watched it until bedtime. We all fell asleep to the storm which died out for a few hours with flashes and rumbles every now and then and it picked up again around sunrise. Another one was during my D of E expedition. We had just put the tent up. It had been a particularly hot or humid day and it didn't 'feel' like a storm was coming. We had finished dinner on the little travel stove. The anvils built up very quickly, literally within minutes. Then a dry storm started and we saw lightning in the distance and heard rumbles. It got close very quickly and all of a sudden a strike hit the tree in the same field as us and scared us all so we all (there was about 100 of us camping in that field) ran as fast as we could to the toilet block and reception which had an alcove we could all hide under. As we rain the rain started to fall and before we reached the block we were all soaked through. All we could do was just stand there shivering and sheltering until the storm passed. It struck the field we were in several times but luckily missed all the tents. It passed over very quick but was very intense.

Just checked my calendar and I was on holiday then. Was it an all nighter? Even so I swear we used to get several every summer.

Nothin' but big beautiful cotton wool clouds here.

Any reason for the airflow change? In my opinion I think we are getting less storms. The last overnighter I can remember was in the early 2000's. I don't think it's me remembering wrongly as I've always loved storms and remember even the little ones. I swear we used to get at least 3 overnighters each summer. They would have lightning at least every minute for hours on end and at their peak basically constant lightening. In fact I remember one summer me and my parents took a whole album of pictures of the build up to the huge storms (they're probably in the attic somewhere).

That looked like a monster. Hopefully we'll get more of the same this year. What had the conditions been like that day?

Do you think we really are getting less storms than several years ago or are we just selectively remembering good storms that make it seem like we're getting less. Does that data suggest less storms and if not why do you think people keep saying we don't have as many storms as we used to. Are we having the same amount of storms but they are less intense?

Think we got more rain over the last 24 hours than we've had all year. Rained all night and finally stopped raining a couple of hours ago. Zilch T-storm activity as I predicited.