Flash bang flash bang etc

ChannelThunder I was just looking to Sunday on Ventusky - central south getting a plume-type import by the looks of things but this will look completely different nearer the time I’m sure

It’s the end of the book ppl. Stop reading!

Just kind of murky here

TheOgre is this one of those “wrong answers only” tests?

Ventusky offering hope for the next few hours

ChannelThunder I’ve never successfully bought a storm the one time I tried it didn’t fit onto the plane

Azazel cells today will be tracking nicely across a fair few counties to get to you so there’s always hope enough juice can be picked up along the way

Azazel just wait and see

Risk of some elevated thunderstorms Kent through to Hampshire. Imo it could well be possible looking at radar and now the cloud and rain has cleared somewhat

Looks like a small squall setting up in Sussex

Nice little storm in the channel near Dover

Raining quite persistently. Doesn’t seem very likely there will be any thunder until this all moves away and/or we can get some convergence going

I really recommend ppl who are interested in tomo’s potential check out the discussion in the UKWW chat. Nigel and Tony have been conversing and some really interesting revelations about how these thing work. In summary tomorrow won’t be a classic event, but certainly some potential for those in the right place at the right time. Area of interest appears to be Salisbury - but there’s a good risk map which covers a large swathe of the south coast Link: Sorry, you do not have permission for that! WWW.UKWEATHERWORLD.CO.UK (You’ll need to sign up if you haven’t already)

Jamie M awesome! Was this to the north of the storms looking towards the south? I only ask as I think usually on a typical storm moving east the southern edge is often the most active? Or I might be wrong… this would potentially mean where you were considering the storm was moving in from the east you would have a view of the most intensive point of electrical activity… I think… only say this cos you had a great view into the clouds from your location. All I saw was sheet lightning haha

Eagle Eye knew it! Saw this the other day - also monday looking ripe for thundering peels

TJS1998Tom I’ve heard some mention of rather large areas of MUCAPE which is basically ‘night energy’ for storms. Looking at all the other synoptics it would seem that you can’t rule out some active albeit discrete cells anywhere around the midlands as the night progresses, and well into tomo. That said I wouldn’t lose important sleep watching the horizon. It will *hopefully* wake you up if it happens

Funny how May has traditionally been the start of the season and last night’s storms literally waited until May 2nd to arrive

Looks like Saturday could be a good one for the SE corner of the SE corner of the SE

I accept forecasting isn’t an exact science but this experimental prediction is based on existing conditions so don’t immediately write it off as impossible

Okay I need an answer to this one important question: how low can this go? South of the M4?

Hate to dampen ppls hopes in the south but it’s highly likely we won’t have storms this evening. Don’t waste time watching the continent it’s not gonna happen.

Some shots. In fact the only really shareable ones. Photo 3 was one of a handful of visible bolts throughout the whole event but this particular one struck probably somewhere within a mile of my position and around 1 second after this photo a huge shotgun boom cracked out. It was scary ish but it was also amazing. edit: the video doesn’t show all the flashes. There were so many instantaneous elevated ones (of the flickering variety) but the camera just doesn’t pick them up IMG_4092.mov

As the number of flashes people estimated last night seems to keep growing, I’m going to officially update my guess to approximately 1,000,005 (the last 5 were once I got home) in all seriousness though I would say my first guess was wrong. There were at least 10 per minute at the very lowest end of the scale, and up to probably quite easily 50 at peak intensity. with some rudimentary maths: the storm lasted 3 hours(ish). So 60 x 3 is 180 minutes of action overall. an average of about 30 fpm (flashes per minute) 30 x 180 = 5400. I’m going to add another 600 to account for the quite exceptional duration of the peak intensity (and that there were multiple bouts of activity) and round it off to 6000. I think the poster who claimed well over 100,000 might need to check the filament in their bedroom striplight

Good storms. Elevated - only saw about 4 forks out of about probably 2000 flashes over 3 hours. Essentially it was backbuilding over our area. 7/10 I think - not exceptional and hampered by heavy rain. Not being able to see the lightning directly was a little bit frustrating but the intensity of it was pretty impressive When’s the next one?