Ben Sainsbury

Lightning being detetcted along M4? Strange..

Is that of the SW storm, or another developing one?

Wow that looks incredible!

Calling it... My best bet, drawing a triangle from Swindon - Salisbury - Reading!

That's what Sat24 is currently suggesting, low level cloud slowly burning off, more cumulus type cloud moving in from English Channel.

I did not see this coming... Day 2 Convective Outlook VALID 06:00 UTC Thu 15 Sep 2016 - 05:59 UTC Fri 16 Sep 2016 ISSUED 20:54 UTC Wed 14 Sep 2016 ISSUED BY: Dan Elevated convection over the English Channel and environs on Thursday morning should gradually weaken with time - however, there is some uncertainty as to how far north precipitation (and more importantly the cloud shield) may extend, and this may have some impacts on evening developments if cloud clearance is too slow. Some sporadic/isolated lightning from embedded medium-level instability release will also be possible in Northern Ireland / western Scotland from showery bursts of rain. The upper pattern on Thursday will gradually become more progressive as an Atlantic upper trough approaches from the west, causing the cut-off low over Biscay to nudge eastwards across France, while elongating - and this process may be responsible for the advection of some elevated convection into parts of SE England and coastal East Anglia on Thursday night. Elsewhere, capping will persist for much of the day. That said, strong heating and increasing low-level wind convergence, as the surface low over Brest peninsula migrates NNE to southern England by evening, may provide sufficient forcing for scattered thunderstorms to develop late afternoon into Thursday evening, particularly across the W Country / Cen S England NE to the south Midlands. Forecast profiles are quite dry, and so initial convection may struggle to develop at first, but should any storms form then the biggest concern will be local flash flooding given PWAT in the mid-high 30s mm and slow storm motion. Gusty winds and hail to 1.5cm in diameter will also be possible, which falls just shy of our SVR criteria, hence no SVR issued at this stage. CAPE values near 1,000 Jkg-1 and steep mid-level lapse rates (although these gradually weakening (in a relative sense) through the evening) suggest lightning will be quite prolific in the most active storms. During the evening and night, the approaching Atlantic front will likely increase low-level convergence and provide some forced ascent, with perhaps an increase in coverage of showery precipitation in a N-S zone (highlighted by the elongated SLGT), only slowly migrating eastwards. 200-400 Jkg-1 MLCAPE overnight suggests that some occasional lightning will be possible with this activity, albeit in a rather sporadic nature, and likely to not be as frequent as initial surface-based storms on Thursday evening. The exact positioning of the zone of wind convergence, and hence greatest thunderstorm potential, is subject to a little doubt and hence the MDT may need adjusting slightly as conditions become clearer through the day on Thursday.

Must be incredibly hard to forecast I cannot imagine! Hopefully will bring us some surprises!

This was commented earlier, how have the Met Office not done well?

Not neccesarily so, for example back when the MCS went up through the spine of England into East Midlands, there were rates of 100 strikes per minute, so I'm not surprised given the storm severity.

A picture taken from Hillsborough:

Was going to say PIT did you mean 80 per minute max?

I've got a feeling that there's been a issue with the latest Netweather SR update from 6z to 12z, 6z almost perfectly in line with predicting the area of storms, yet now predicts a large storm to be building in the channel in an hour or so? And removes the storm up North completely?

Exactly what I was hoping to look at! I hate to moan but being at Sixth Form I'm right next to Chew Valley Lake where my arrow points at, oh my. Anyway looking at Sat24, if we can have a clearing by 5pm, which seems possible could be in for another treat!

Yeah it did, then curved off to the East!

I was in SW Bristol and it's not that we had nothing, like I had Thunder, just the actual lightning tracks of the storms have left such a small gap I'm quite surprised. Still grateful nevertheless, I'm not one to moan!!

Times like this I laugh, it's just overly ridiculous, will be excited to look at the lightning archive on Netweather later, for the mean time, if the sun peaks through hopefully we should see any avaliable energy build up!

Mine and fellow Bristol Storm Fans Luck! Not to note in general been a cracking day for SW England!

Could hear a few rumbles here in South Bristol, no lightning however I jus hope this isn't the end of the storms for this area!

Bit of a joke, can't see much structure to the storm being elevated, but seems active to say the least!

Very quite annoying being in Sixth Form right now and having no view to my South or West!

Yeah I knew I wasn't right, thanks for the professional input! Always learning!

I'm going to do the best I can but I'm not too sure myself... All the ingredients were in place for severe thunderstorms, we had high CAPE values, good wind shear and high values of storm relative helicity. These values combined along with decent dirnual heating at the start of the day helped fuel the storms. I believe the storm originally was travelling along a warm front not only giving it the trigger to get started, but to support its elevated nature, the storms developed above and in front the warm front (cold section) in the troposphere, if that's right? Elevated storms can happen at any time of day and don't have to be imports at all, that is just what is most common here. I wouldn't have a clue why the CG strikes were different, I'm not very experienced at all. If this makes sense read this: http://www.theweatherprediction.com/habyhints/164/

Indeed to watch and it's very interesting as the plume looks to be incoming from the East? Something which I've never seen before? As always with plumes they come up from the south, but this moves in straight from the E/ESE, strange and would be very hard to predict!

Look at the Lightning archives from yesterday and today and looks to be our storm still active for almost 24 hours?

It has been alive for over 12 hours!