One of the most ferocious thunderstorms I encountered was in the early hours of September 18th 1992, possibly a Supercell storm it produced some of the most violent lightning I have ever seen for about 2 hours, directly overhead, another particularly impressive storm was on the evening of 19th September 2014, this began just before 9pm lasting just over an hour, the lightning was pretty vicious, frequent and right overhead, the storm put down near 50mm of rain causing flash flooding in Southend. Another of my great storms was that of 6th August 1981, at exactly 2pm the sky went absolutely black, I have never before or since seen the sky so dark in daytime, this severe storm lasted about 90minutes. Another particularly vicious thunderstorm was on the evening of 17th October 1990 in Aldershot, it began around 7pm and soon became violent, by 7.30pm our Platoon Sergeant had nearly been hit by lightning, missing him by 30metres! Fair to say we were ordered to abandon our field exercise and ‘get the hell out’!
