Ben Sainsbury

Again for Southern areas, it's looking very promising again! Especially for home grown surface based storms. Some impressive cape values too at this range but obviously taken with a pinch of salt. ATM: Sunday - Eastern Areas Monday - CS England Tuesday - SW England + S Wales though likely to change!

From experience it seems really uncommon to see up to 80kts of DLS. For this to be passing over southern areas means we could see some photogenic showers later? Could be interesting!

There we have our first strike! (of hopefully many) We should see more showers continue to develop as instability spreads eastwards.

My area of "Hope" lol.

Still have a gut feeling that someone else is going to kick off... I never expected activity to kick off this early anyway for areas near myself.

I know some are getting dishearted, but the main time of interest for me to the 1am onwards period. This is where CAPE amounts and various other parameters reach their peak for us. I'd expect to see some further developments within the next hour or two. People talking about the outflow, reducing the chance of storms, but as we see the MCS move further ENE/NE, and showers further west move NNE, the distance between the two masses of storms increases so I think we could potentially see the situation improve for those in CS England. Just my opinion, not trying to deliberately get hopes up.

What I've gathered is naturally that if a storm splits then the eastern side will come off strongest. From experience it's beginning to look like the MCS is losing a little intensity indicated by the strongest amount of sferics on the Eastern side. The storms forming to the west are from what I've read are as a result of the outflow of the storm. This could bring opportunities to More Eastern SW/CS areas.

Lightning now visible on this webcam: http://www.st-malo.com/webcam/

Might be a good webcam to look at as the Rennes storm moves out to sea. http://www.st-malo.com/webcam/

Interesting looking cell to my East, seems to be a decent inflow too. Will update with pictures when have better view.

Can see a shower in the distance, but no structure or anything else interesting to be seen.

More lightning kick-starting in North of Bristol aha, you must be kidding me.

Bloody heck Cardiff, insane!

It's literally a wall of cloud and lightning coming towards me, really surreal experience!

This lightning blows my mind away, incredible sight!

Lul, I'm with you on that one!

Just saw a flash to my SE hmm...

Indeed, now this where I'm hoping the action is gonna be!

Now that must be a pretty severe storm, might turn into an MCS as it does move further NW. If that is the case we may see new storms form to the SE.

Those "fake" strikes maybe anvil crawlers?

How many fake strikes are showing up then, another near Exeter hmm...

On a positive note, means on a later occasion like Sunday/Monday the SE are more likely to be at risk.

Just a few thinngs to note: - High CAPE Values of 1000 J/Kg - up to 40knts of DLS, good for sustained strong updrafts. Could definitely see some strong thunderstorms,with frequent lightning and decent sized hail. That's as far as my knowledge extends unfortunately!

Unfortunately I don't think we have a trigger for these storms. No cold front or convergence for example. On another note I have a really big eye out for Sat morning, could be some large active thunderstorms, brewing from the Bay of Biscay into NW France in SW England, Wales and into NW England, have a forecast out by tonight, but another amateur.

What is preventing any storms from taking place today?