anvilhead

lol - yep - its crashed!! my hunch is that the main oomph of these cells will have extendednorth to across the m4 corridoor in 2 hours(ish) time, and continuing northwards, looking at how things are panning out - probably completely wrong though! Sam

not quite sure whats happening (as usual!) - the precip seems to be hurtling north across the country, but the instability moving up much more slowly across the south coast, so it looks like everything is decaying when it tracks north - maybe thats the nose of the plume streaming ahead, which coincided with a trough while over the channel, and now the trough, moving slower is destabilising the atmosphere now the plumes in place. Certainly some explosive cells going up over the far south! Talk of supercells over this weekend with wind profiles the way they are - is making for some gripping radar watching - Good luck everyone! Sam

I just hope I get time to go home and have a couple of hours sleep as I'm knackered! - lightning on the horizon at 9.30 would be ideal .. its not much to ask Sam, Cirencester

Morning all http://www.wetter3.de/vertikal.html (GFS Atmosphere Slice viewer) - if you look at 50N, 18Z Today, the wind profiles show SE'ly backed surface flow and a nice curved hodograph with good upper air support - would be interested to hear what others think of supercell chances here, or maybe a back end mcs supercell? - Cheers, Sam I wuld go with MVH from TWO, and not my opinion all btw! Still, I'm hopeful for tinight sam

Hi Jane There's one up and running now - fine news! Yeah I'm more hopeful for this year too - doesn't seem to have been anything in our area for years now. The pattern that keeps these plumes tied to the continent has got to give at some point .. that's what I'm telling myself anyway

Good post Stormyking! I've got a feeling I drove down to the IOW on that night. I was stood in a field watching it - the lightning was instnse for half an hour but was slowly decreasing, so it was a good couple of hours after it kicked off. THere was a photo in the paper with that storm taken by Jamie (one of the other forum members) of lightning striking the sea near a ferry - was that the same storm ? Cheers, Sam

Has to be Kansas 2008 - DIy chase trip with 2 others - we were heading west, and about 100 miles to the north there was a long supercell on the horizon. Eventualy decided that nothing was going to fire east, and so headed north - we had about 30 minutes before nightfall when we reached the storm. Inflow was whistling through the power lines lining the road (which later toppled over I heard!). Stu Robinson was also on this storm with a chase group, and being more expierenced was right in under the storm. The meso was just infront of us, heading east, but there was a sort of wrap around of the base of the storm, so across the whole northern sky there was just a wall of flickering lightning. It wrapped round more and as the light was failing we thought we better get out of the way - Stu contacted us saying it was a monster and he was getting out of the way, so quite rightly, we made a sharp exit - soon ran out of road options heading south and we were bouncing down a mud track as fast as we could with lightning spidering around above us and what looked like a gigantic wedge coming across the fields backlit by lightning as we pushed south. Never seen lightning like it - the anvil zits in the anvil canopy above us were just incredible. We eventualy got s/e ahead of it, and pulled into a motel - the storm had lost its punch at this point - still a nice light show though .. Fond memories of the old plume storms in the uk - I think it was 1995 when we had the last proper decent mcs, and I remember watching cc lightning jumping from storm to storm, and anvil crawlers all over the place. Still, locality makes all the difference - other parts of the country have probably had memorable storm systems more recently. Cheers ,Sam

Great thread Forgive me if I concentrate on weekend potential, but with various options of cheap travel I'd love to see some members banding together on a friday night for a weekend strobe - fest Long range but next weekend (5/6 March) showing some broad strokes of a strong jet and high 850's being pulled up into the eastern med... http://www.wetterzentrale.de/wz/pics/Rtavn2042.png http://www.wzkarten.de/pics/Rtavn19214.png Cheers, Sam (Cirencester)

hi all Does anyone fancy a european convective thread ? If this summer is any way near as un-thundery as the last, I'll be trying to get on a cheap weekend flight, or eurotunnel train, or whatever else is going whenever I can - would be good to see us home in on the thunderiest spots in europe each weekend, maybe discussing travel options and costs as well - anyone have any thoughts ? Cheers, Sam (Cirecnester)

I like both winter and summer - I can enjoy one while looking forwards to the other - in 2010 I was swimming in the lakes round here at night in june, and a few weeks ago walking round the outskirts of my village in -12 on a sparkling bright moonlit night .. My gut feel is that we'll have a good dry and warm spring, and an average summer with another washout august .. all depends how much this anamolous northwesterly theory is correct though - since 2007 summers have been ropey at best, and the synoptics for storms have been very poor. Fingers crossed hey Sam

Hi MB. Good luck!! Well its a credit to this forum that this thread isn't a disrespectful onslaught - I have not seen MB posturing without having a forecast written down that we could eventualy verify, so I believe the response he got was harsh and unjustified, with respect to those that responded that way. Sure - we all have our views - for me I believe that chaos does create unfathomable complexity from a deterministic system as far as the weather goes, and the cycles that are there are unreliable large brush-strokes and can never show fine detail at a distance. I will never believe 100% in any view I have though - all my axioms, even reality itself, is open to being proved wrong or different, and believe this is the scientific way to stay on the road to truth.. so I'm open minded. Sam

I think it was a gustnado that scared the c**p out of me in 2008. We were south of the storm - outflow dominant without any real structure. Led on the tarmac (I have a habit of lying down watching the weather) and it looked like an inverted ampitheatre above me - then down the bottom of the road a column of dist/dirt lifted up and started connecting with the cloudbase. We all scrambled into the van. Stopped on the main road, and it formed over us, taking the air from our lungs - then moved off into the fields - I'm up for chasing but not if I can't stay in a safe position. Still not sure if I was looking at a meso making its way around a hp supercell, or just a gustnado. It was the first supercell I've ever come up on, on the first chase - still enjoyed it after that point, but just never felt safe enough Sam

Lot of talk about the 'anomolous north westerly' of recent years - I sit on the fence with global warming, but if world temps are increasing, then our rosby wave distribution may be changing along with more heat moving up over the continents. It may be not just co-incidence that russia suffered such a prolonged heatwave last year, and the uk a poor summer - if the 90's/00's put us east of an atlantic trough causing the excessive heat, and now this has tightened up to up to put us in to the west of the trough and the excessive heat moving onto the continent, locking us in to a NW'ly flow in the summer months, then this might explain things - If man made gw is a myth, then its a combination of global cycles and bad luck that we hacen't had storms for the last few years, and cold winters in the 90's ... Cheers, Sam

Thing is though firestorm, and I'm not trying to be argumentative here, what percentage of posts on this thread are saying they think the forecasters have got it wrong, and there will be widespread thunderstorms? imo Forecasting is dealing with probabilities, and if something isn't probable, but possible, its a lot of fun talking about how things are developing in respect to that -

interesting to see what happens to the precip moving onto the SE coast right now - I'm probably completely wrong but I think there's a chance here of some organised convection. Lightning wizards charts earlier were showing mid level cape at this time moving across that way, and some extreme low level wind shear - I'd say portsmouth, brighton, moving inland, but whater you do dont get excited by my comments here because my failed storm chases are legendry!! sam

Hey John - no bad - I didnt mean to sound short. I'm not as gem'd up as I'd like to be, you sound like you have a pretty good grasp to me .. Yeah I'm thinking along the same lines - I've read in a few places that the system isn't deepening as expected too - I always think with UK weather though, because we have dont have the mesoscale models etc that the states do and mostly coarse glocal models to go from, there's always the chance of something unforecast happening - maybe some dryer air being pulled in that wasnt modeled at the upper layers etc - sam

Hi JohnW. Torro is the tornado and thunderstorm research organisation, so they forecast the specific threats posed by thunderstorms and Tornadoes, not an all in weather service trying to keep the public safe and aware of all weather events ocuring. sam

lightning confirmed just off hte sw coast - http://meteocentre.com/lightning/map_sfuk.php?time=0〈=en&map=Europe

moisture seems to be pooling up against this shortwave - 17c dewpoints in the east, and up to 21c in the west country acording to xcweather - looks pretty juicy out there! Looks like we'll see the cb's from here in cirencester, but they'll go north as it often happens - still - I'm mostly wrong, so fingers crossed! Sam

Good account Ryan

my take on that Pat is that im not exactly pro GW, but there does seem to be heat streaming up through europe continousely - look at the continous heights across northern europe the last few summers, and semi permament trough either over us or just to the west - it looks almost like the equator/pole heat exchange has jumped up a notch and locked us in to a pattern just west of any action. Would maybe explain the exceptional heat of the 90's and early 00's with a sw>ne jetstream not quite tight to the continent as it is now, and the northern blocking as a result of waa racing up to the artic even through the winter months. I'm obviousely no scientist though! Fingers crossed for my journey back to cirencester tonight ...

I can concur actualy - its lost its potency and seems like it might have even hit an inversion ? obscured by other cloud now though - we'll see hey

Hey all - I'm in Solihull, and I can see that storm going up over nw birmingham - its explosive!

Just had an in depth look at the current conditions, model outputs etc, and have come to the conclusion I DONT KNOW WHATS GOING ON... as per usual. Still - I read on the forecast thread that convective temperatures are 26c away from the front - hoping it'll stall, the winds will back, and pull some of the temps further south into the mix thisafternoon I suppose .. Cheers, Sam

wow thats growing too