Pat Butcher

Yep, I saw the top of the cell that's over the North York Moors when sferics began around Castleford. It had a cauliflower top, and wasn't making any effort to flatten into an anvil.

Miles off - which is a good thing, that forecast was pretty dull IMO

Is anyone else quite surprised at the squall that's popped up around Shrewsbury?

Fairly optimistic - the cold front is slightly slower than forecast, and the Met Office have extended their warning area westwards towards Manchester. East of the Pennines plausibly looks in the firing line.

Probably many lightning strikes over Blaenau Ffestiniog. At 10ish miles away, the middling frequencies that give the thunderclap definition are rather attenuated, and the low frequencies are probably smeared together by reverberation off the mountains.

UK weather warnings WWW.METOFFICE.GOV.UK Met Office UK weather warnings for rain, snow, wind, fog and ice. Choose your location to keep up to date with local weather warnings. Surprisey thunderstorm warning from Met Office. I wonder what they're seeing that I'm not - there's no evidence of modelled precip popping up on radar so far.

This is good news. Personally, I don't think this is a thrilling weather anomaly that will be interesting to experience - I'm in fact very anxious about it. The sooner it clears off, the better.

Apologies for the newbie question - within an ensemble run, should the operational run be given more weight than its ensemble counterparts? i.e. is that extreme outlier operational run as equally 'likely' as the other ensemble runs, or is it more likely because it's the operational?

Love it. Still FI but this feature has popped up in quite a few runs now...

The cloudscapes here in Leeds are looking quite convective.

I saw that! Total FI stuff, but as I recall there was a huge MCS that engulfed most of England in that run.

In my unprofessional opinion it's too early to tell. The models all tell a different story. In particular, the GFS varies from run to run in terms of its CIN chart. We know that capping plays a huge role in setups like this one, so it might be an on-the-day job once there's more certainty as to likely affected areas.

Bognor looking pretty spicy at the moment: Bognor Regis WestCam - Live webcam view with sound of West Beach Bognor Regis WWW.BOGNOR.TODAY Bognor Regis beach live webcam from the Pier at Bognor Regis, West Sussex UK. Live HD streaming webcam view of West Beach looking towards Aldwick, Pagham and Selsey.

Yeah that's top drawer Jamie, nice one - saves having to scrabble around these nonsense webcam sites if it all kicks off. Good luck, hope you get a pelter!

Highly unlikely - a thunderclap is around 120dB, with 150dB required to shatter eardrums. Noise Comparisons WWW.CHEM.PURDUE.EDU Any prolonged exposure to 120dB is enough to damage hearing - the tinnitus you get after attending a loud gig is a consequence of this damage. However, the nature of the damage tends to be that it builds over time, and results in degraded hearing and tinnitus later in life, as opposed to the immediate and catastrophic impairment that you describe.