Convective

If this is what the warm front is doing, that cold front is going to be pretty incredible..

Heavy AcCas moving in from the south

Right overhead now. Massive purple bolts and very loud thunder

Thunder here!

Wooow! Whole atmosphere feels like it's stalled here. Massive tower right over me and feels like I'm under a dome! Something's going to give!!

Storms firing up just south of here..... Pleeeeeaaase!!!

Finally the altostratus layer is thinning, allowing altocumulus to form

I'd say the blanket of cloud which has done nothing but produce the odd spot of light rain

Horribly flat cloud has ruined the day here. Shame to see so much energy go to waste!

Forecasts are completely invalid during plume events. Anything can happen anywhere

These photos are brilliant. Keep up the good work folks!

A few nice cloudscapes here including altocumulus and ribbons of altocumulus castellanus

First developments over Northern Ireland too

Latest BBC forecast describes the storms as being potentially 'ferocious' and 'pretty powerful beasts' And to think some people are already writing the event off....... Ha

A few surprises for many tomorrow afternoon and evening, me thinks...

Are you here next week? We usually get anything from plumes. Most surprises come in the middle of the night, 4am when everyone has finished radar watching and all of a sudden the Irish Sea throws something out

Did someone order fireworks? Great warm uppers too, allowing storm development throughout the morning and afternoon period, moving north then tapping into all that beastly energy for some fireworks that even NASA would be jealous of... Admittedly its pointless uploading the dewpoints and humidities as they aren't anything to sing about but as aforementioned, these would be irrelevant until storms became routed into the lower levels I'm going to upgrade from Lite to Full just to see the MLCAPE, upper temperature and upper dewpoint charts - even if its just for the visual pleasure!

For slightly easier reading I have converted the data from two locations, Manchester Airport and Heathrow Airport, into line graphs which may be more easily understood for some users. This is for number of days with thunder per year since 1973. Manchester (EGCC): London Heathrow (EGLL):

We need a 'proper' Spanish Plume with low pressure situated southwest of us, and high to the east to give us that true conveyor belt set up. Not these two farty attempts we've had at one this year where only a handful of energy has made it as far north as Oxford at the most!

Look at MLCAPE, not SBCAPE. These are elevated thunderstorms so until they become rooted into the boundary layer then SBCAPE will have very little or no effect apart from making some pretty clouds.

A lot more to look at but deary me, its been a long time coming.....!

18Z GFS will make people happy. Much more widespread activity on this run! Pushing further north too! Only just seen today's 12Z NMM and that looks stunning too. Lets just get a bit more of northerly momentum on that plume and this could be a good one for many who usually miss out!

Oooh yes please!

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