Summer tyre

Approaching lightning out to sea now very frequent; around 1 stroke a second. This is tropical storm intensity.

@LetItSnow!That appeared from nowhere, gathered over the coast and was torrential all within 30 minutes!

Lots of people on this thread right now

Here's some homework for the morning, @Thunders Understanding Metering and Metering Modes PHOTOGRAPHYLIFE.COM Basically evaluative is what your camera or phone will default to.

There is some proper rain heading for Eastbourne and Seaford - it's coming across from the southeast. Team Bexhill will just get the edge of it.

Ev (evaluative) normally refers to the type of metering on SLR type cameras.

Fresh cell opening up just off the Baie de la Somme

Just spotted a flash

@Supacell I'd head south rather than to Folkestone; the sweet spot has been described as Brighton to Eastbourne. Right now where I am it is still and clear and there are even a few stars visible!

What are you seeing that on, @Eagle Eye? www.lightningmaps.org?

We got rain.

I have that Bresser 5 in 1 and it's fine. It had been showing me the low battery icon since about Christmas, but the ground has been too saturated to get a ladder to it. I changed the batteries last week and solved that, but I have noticed that the anemometer doesn't spin quite as freely as it did when new. Can it be serviced, oiled with silicone oil in some way? Any advice welcomed.

21.2mm here overnight.

@alexisj9 you were lucky; we had rain all morning! Light, infuriating stuff that dealyed me sorting a problem with a car as I needed it to be dry.

Temperature log for the last 30 days here. Max 16.3. Min 3.2. Steady downward trend for the past 9 days, which is bizarre in April.

According to my weather station we had 2.4mm of rain at 10 am today. Actually I serviced it and changed the batteries so the rain bucket got shaken around a bit!

One of the major hazards of lightning strikes are ground potential shifts; a lightning strike a few tens of metres away can cause a very large ground potential gradient, to the extent that the ground under your right foot can be hundreds of volts higher than that under your left. Apparently, that is a far larger cause of lightning-induced deaths and serious injuries than actually being struck directly. If you are caught outside in lightning, above all don't lie down - make sure you keep your legs together to minimises the distance between any points in contact with the ground. Entire fields of cows lying down have been killed by lightning strikes for this reason. Equally, this means that nearby electrical equipment can suddenly find a large voltage difference across it and the effect is that the lightning appears to have jumped invisibly to damage it. It hasn't, of course.

Big cell developing just south of us - a cloud went over and dropped some big spots of rain and a bit of hail, got offshore and erupted!

Hit our highest temperature for months - 16.3 deg C. Don't all cheer at once.

Yes indeed, @Jo Farrow; cheered me right up! I drove across much of the south east today in low cloud and mizzle, so here's hoping.

Thanks @Jo Farrow for a nice upbeat look at a cheerier weekend!

That insignificant looking little low that followed Kathleen packed quite a punch. Look what happened to this beachside coffee shop in Falmouth from high tides! It's been unexpectedly windy overnight here too; I expect all the beachstones that had just been pushed off the promenade by the bulldozers will be back again. https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5g5vpOL-0Q/

Cornwall has taken a pasting tonight

I think Storm Kathleen seems to have tracked about 100 miles further east that it was predicted, so the band of rain on that trailing flank that should have gone through the middle of the country caught the south east. Again. It was gusty here, too. The good news is that today is sunny and dry.

Horrible here - cold, dank and windy.