LightningLover

Blimey. What a night... Whilst it wasn't the most severe storm I've ever seen, the lightning frequency and longevity of it was truly something to behold. The first flashes became visible at around 22:20, with the initiation of the new cells ahead of the french MCS. It then quickly ramped up in frequency, reaching an astonishing hour long peak between 00:30-01:30. In that time frame, the sky was lit in a solid arc from the WSW all the way to the ESE, with additional flashes emanating from outflow cells that were in inland East Sussex- We were effectively surrounded. Rudimentary counting between flashes became futile, as each flash had less than a second between them. Most of the time the flashes were IC, but occasional CG's and C-Cs provided louder booms and more substantial camera footage. Some amazing structure was visible for a short while, with a long and tall roll cloud present within the line. Another thing we noticed was the constantly shifting wind direction and brief fluctuations in temperature; It was apparent that the storm had strong inflow, and as it moved closer there was a brief surge of outflow winds too. The first arc moved WNW over Eastbourne and surrounding areas by 01:45, and after that another 'finger' of rapidly organising convective activity seemingly followed the same path, with almost the same intensity. This slowly trundled it's way towards Eastbourne and beyond, and by 02:30 only distant flashes and cloud top reflections remained. We (me and @Electricmumma) then called a taxi home, tired but smiling! Overall, based on different factors, this storm gets a rating of 8.75/10 from me. Could have been much closer to 10, had the beefy looking cores on radar gone overhead rather than skim the coastline. An extremely impressive display for so early in the season, and the lightning amounts were up there with some of the greats in my lifetime!

Eagle Eye Yep, for Kent definitely!

Yeesh, big downgrade of CAPE amounts on 12z AROME... Musn't be discouraged!

ChannelThunder I beleive the July 2017 humdingers over virtually all of South England '''only''' had 2,000 or so!

Still stunned by the amount of instability the AROME 06z is presenting- almost 3,000J/kg in the channel and over Kent.

WRF-NMM also has over 2000J/kg CAPE spreading in from the southeast, so it's not just the AROME or the UKV!

Eagle Eye That's pretty spectacular- ~2,400J/kg cape directly over East Sussex!

Jamie M Should *just* be enough for a rumble or two!

Eagle Eye In all his years of forecasting, he never did issue a high over East Sussex as far as I'm aware- pretty bullish wording! Even a MDT usually meant carnage

ChannelThunder Keep in mind the bulk of the lightning activity will probably stay within the most unstable area of the higher Theta-E airmass, but yes it does look good!

Eagle Eye The 15z UKV has our portion of the Channel alight for many hours- starts at 20:00 and ends around 02:00! Nice to look at

Eagle Eye Looks like that incredible reservoir of CAPE would be feeding right into the MCS that model produces, so you would imagine the lightning would be very prolific indeed (and you can actually see the gap from the tall tops feeding off the energy towards Kent)

Thunders Mostly the same as Eastbourne, given it's only a few miles away haha! View out to sea is great along the promenade, and the Western view is slightly better as Beachy head doesn't block your line of sight (so a storm over Brighton for example would be far more visible)

Eagle Eye That looks immense, a chart not out of place in high summer!

Very impressive reservoir of MUCAPE on the AROME as well- let's try and get those purple colours over here!!

Paul Hopefully not a sign of things to come!!

Small elevated storms followed by very strong winds?

WYorksWeather I recall @Weather-history mentioning it a while back, and I had to see it for myself! 17c 850's in February is TRULY exceptional, I really can't think of anything that comes close so it's very much an extreme edge-case. And no worries, I just thought you'd be stunned like I was haha!

WYorksWeather Don't forget this once happened!

Some lightning occurring on the northern flank of the frontal band- Looks somewhat elevated in nature, heading N/NNW. May head down to seafront if it looks like it has any chance of sustaining itself

I note the 18z GFS has a brief flirtation with 14-15c 850's in the SE during the early hours of the 6th... Warm, humid air (13-15c at the surface around 01:00) being advected by a deep trough out west- could be one to watch!

Gorgeous spring like day today in Bexhill- 14c with increasingly sunny skies! That's our allowance for the next 3 weeks then haha

15-16c 850hPa temps encroaching on the 06z GFS. Broadly the same synoptics as the last run!

TwisterGirl81 20-22nd March seems to be a semi-consistent time frame on the GFS for a very mild southerly- One to watch! I'm looking for warmth and thunderstorms now haha.

Paul I love seeing the NW radar gain new and improved features over time! Thanks for the work, still the best UK radar on the interwebs!